by Tonya Kappes
“Who said I did that?” I protested.
It was true that I’d broken into Burns Funeral to get Mamie’s teeth out of her file like Charlotte Rae had asked me about earlier, but no way in hell was I trying to take their clients.
“Charlotte told me all about your little crazy tricks.” Gina’s chest heaved up when she took a deep breath and down when she let it out.
“I . . .” Charlotte started to explain. “I had no idea that those crazy stunts were because you can see the dead. I mean”—her voice faded—“I’m so sorry.”
“I wasn’t trying to steal anything.” I glared at Gina Marie.
Now I wished I had been arrested.
There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to run a smear campaign against me and the funeral home.
“I think it’s best you leave and let your sister deal with you when she gets back.” Gina walked to the office door and pointed for me to leave.
“If my sister is on vacation, then why is her car here?” I asked and walked out into the hallway.
“She went with Sammy. They left from here.” Gina Marie slammed Charlotte’s door between us.
“You could’ve told me about Sammy Hardgrove and this vacation,” I whispered when Charlotte wisped on by me on our way out of Hardgrove’s. I gave jazz fingers to the receptionist. “Toodles.”
She glared.
I had to remind myself that it didn’t matter what should’ve been done; Charlotte Rae was dead. My entire body literally stopped functioning. My feet stopped working. The muscles in my face stopped working because as much as I tried to pick my jaw up off the sidewalk in front of the fountain, my mouth wouldn’t close. My gut tugged.
“Charlotte,” I gasped after I got my lungs to suck in some air and out my mouth. “Either Sammy Hardgrove or his wife killed you.”
“Sammy boy wouldn’t do that.” The words oozed out of her mouth, giving me an ick factor all over my body. “But his wife,” Charlotte snapped. “That’s another story.”
“Sammy boy?” I sucked in a deep breath and shook my head. “You know I have to call Jack Henry.”
“You can’t do that,” Charlotte begged. “Then the whole world would know.”
I put my hand over my brow to shield my eyes from the sun. The police officer was standing on the sidewalk talking to Arley and Hardgrove’s security guard. Arley leaned on the metal rake and the security guard was in a golf cart.
“Crap.” My heart sank when I saw Arley still holding the files in his hands.
Not that they’d do me any good since I was about one hundred percent sure Charlotte was offed by a bitter wife, and the woman had dumped Charlotte somewhere.
But where?
Arley and the officer shook hands and the officer got in his cruiser and left before I got to the hearse. Arley still had the files. The security guard zipped away in the golf cart, but not without giving me a good stare.
“Ms. Emma.” Arley handed the files to me.
“What was he talking about?” I had to know. Especially if it was about me.
“He told me and our security guard to keep an eye out for you if you tried to come back and to not let you in.” He pointed to the files. “What do you want with those?”
“Charlotte called me from vacation and asked me to give a couple people follow-up calls.” I smiled through my lie. “I’m only doing it for her so Gina won’t fire her for not tying up loose ends before she went on vacation.” I opened the hearse door and threw the files on the seat. “Say, Arley, did you ever see Sammy with Charlotte?”
“Um.” He stuck his finger in his mouth and gnawed on the side of the tip by his nail.
“By the sounds of your um, you did.” It didn’t take a lie detector to tell me Arley was hiding something. “What is going on around here?”
“Ms. Emma, you and John Howard have a good relationship and I’m sure he sees things he shouldn’t and doesn’t say a word. It’s a lot of the same around here. I can’t say a word. I have a family. A new baby and a stack of unpaid medical bills for my daddy. I have to have my job.”
Arley was right. I had to respect his employment.
“I’m sorry. Congratulations on the new baby.” A wry smile crossed my lips. “I’m sorry to hear about your dad. Is he okay?”
“Nah. He got that lung thing from smoking all these years.” Arley’s voice faded away.
“COPD?” I asked. The hurt he was feeling radiated through his body.
He nodded. His eyes sad. “He’s on oxygen all the time. So forgive me if I can’t gossip or tell things that aren’t related to me. I have a family to look out for.”
“I’m sorry I put you in that position. I completely understand and Charlotte was very lucky to have an employee like you.” I couldn’t help but think about my relationship with John Howard and hoped he’d do the same for me if he were put in a similar situation.
“Was?” Arley’s brows furrowed. “Am I getting fired?”
“Oh no.” A nervous giggle escaped me. “She’s very lucky to have an employee like you.”
“But you said was.” Arley sure did have a good memory.
“Did I?” I asked and jumped into the hearse before he could ask any more questions. “Thanks for the help.”
“All right.” He nodded and stared at me the entire time I backed up and pulled out of Hardgrove’s.
“He sure is a nice man.” Charlotte sat in the front seat.
“Was there really a file in your top drawer for me?” I asked.
“Yes. There is,” Charlotte confirmed. “But I’m begging you. Please don’t tell Jack Henry anything until you figure out if Mary Katherine Hardgrove killed me. Let’s find my body, then we can tell him.” Charlotte’s lip jutted out. She put her hands together in a prayer pose. “Please. I don’t want people to remember me in death with a Charlotte letter.” She snorted. An un-Charlotte thing to do. She stuck her elbow out. “Get it? Charlotte letter. Scarlet letter?”
“Yeah. I get it.” Though I didn’t find it too funny that she was making a mockery of the fact she was the other woman. Never in a million decades would I have thought Charlotte would’ve stooped to such a low level. It wasn’t her standards. And to think it was with a Hardgrove. Sammy Hardgrove to be exact.
Chapter 7
There wasn’t time to pay Sammy and Mary Katherine Hardgrove a visit before Sissy Phillips’s funeral. I feared I was going to be late as it was, since the police officer took up more time than I had allowed.
“Aren’t we going to find me?” Charlotte spat.
“No. We are going to put Sissy in the ground.” I gripped the wheel and zoomed back to Sleepy Hollow.
Sissy’s cousin, Bess Phillips, was standing on the front porch smoking her big cig, giving me the stink eye when I pulled up. She damn good and well knew that I didn’t allow smoking on the property. There was even a nice sign that I had made and nailed to the brick by the door that directed smokers across the street to the town square where they could sit on the bench and puff away.
Bess’s hand curved in the air with the cig stuck between her thumb and finger. On the way down, she opened her fingers, letting the cig fall on the steps of Eternal Slumber. With the toe of her shoe, she twisted it on top of the burning tobacco until the butt was smashed like a fly hit by a flyswatter. Her eyes never left my face once, making me believe she’d done that exact same move a time or two.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Emma Lee Raines.” The creases around her lips, caused from entirely too much sunbathing, deepened as she duck-billed them together.
Whatever bone Bess had to pick with me had to wait. I could see there were already people in the foyer of the funeral home ready to view Sissy’s body and pay their respects.
“Did you hear me, Emma Lee Raines?” Bess stood next to the hearse with her hands planted on her thin waist, her hip jutted to the right. Her newly permed hair was entirely too tight and I wondered if Mary Anna Hardy was losing her touch. “You’
ve done went and lost our family pin. Our heirloom. We told you that we wanted that pin stuck right here.” Bess smacked her boob so hard, it hurt me.
“Bess, calm down.” I assured her.
“She’s backwoods crazy.” Charlotte noted something we already knew about that family.
“I did give Mary Anna the clothes and pin you gave me. I told her your strict instructions and she repeated them back to me.” I walked past her. “If the pin isn’t there, I’m sure it’s with your belongings I need to give back to you.”
After one of our loved ones goes to their final eternity and their family entrusts them into my care, I ask for things like photos to put together a memory collage for the DVD and have a television set up near the signing book for the line of mourners to watch as they wait. I also get a collection of the deceased’s favorite music, which we piped through the dinosaur intercom. Sissy’s just so happened to be the heavy metal eighties rock group Metallica. When I tried to steer Bess, Sissy’s beneficiary, away from such music, she wouldn’t hear of it.
The thrashing metal hit, “Master Of Puppets,” was crackling through the speakers. Granny stood by the signing book. Her head was ticking toward the viewing room. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to tell me something or about to head bang. I just never knew with her. When her lip twitched, I knew she was wanting me to look in the viewing room. James, Bess’s brother, was playing air guitar right next to Sissy’s head. When our eyes caught, he gave me the rock ’n’ roll sign with his fingers and stuck his tongue out while shaking his pointy Mohawk back and forth.
“Have you seen Mary Anna?” I asked Granny.
“This is a disgrace to our family business and the dead.” Granny’s displeasure was written on her face.
“What are you gonna do about my family heirloom?” Bess said through her brown gritted teeth. The nicotine oozed from her pores.
“I’ll be right back.” I punched the down button on the elevator, the only button for the elevator, and stepped in, enjoying the quiet on my short trip downstairs.
Vernon wasn’t in the morgue, Mary Anna hadn’t come to pay her respects and there was not an alumni pin anywhere to be found.
“Where is it?” I asked, practically tearing the place apart looking for it.
“You’ll find it.” Charlotte stood next to the elevator.
“You scared me to death.” I held my hands to my heart.
“I have to talk to you.” Charlotte walked over and just watched me opening drawers and scouring through them. “I need you to promise me you won’t say anything to Jack Henry.”
“Only if you can help.” I shook my head. It was just like Charlotte to never pitch in. Ever. “I have to get upstairs before Granny or Bess goes nuts.” I held the elevator door. “Are you coming or not?”
Charlotte shook her head. “I just don’t want to see Granny right now knowing the pain she’s going to be in when she finds out about me . . .” Charlotte didn’t finish her sentence. She simply dragged her finger across her throat.
“Fine.” I pulled my hand away and let the elevator door close between us. My mind reeled on where the pin could be. Mary Anna had left the clothing bag downstairs along with the file, which is where she should’ve left it, but there was no pin. I vividly remembered a pin was in there too. And my only hope was to get in touch with Mary Anna to find out if she knew where it was.
The elevator doors slid open to a vestibule full of Sleepy Hollow residents. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest when I saw Bea Allen Burns. Seeing Bea Allen made me cringe. It would give her great pleasure if she found out that we were missing Sissy’s pin.
“Nice turnout, Emma Lee.” Bea Allen’s brow rose a trifle as she approached me.
“Thank you.” I smiled and for a split second I wanted to ask her about Peggy Wayne’s pearls, but decided to put that card in my back pocket.
Bess saw me and made a beeline toward us. I quickly darted down the hall to find Mary Anna.
“Did you put Sissy’s pin on her? Right here?” I asked when I found her in the kitchen making a pot of coffee.
“Of course I did. Her cousin, Bess, you know the one who ate supper before grace”—Mary Anna’s eyebrows lifted in the gossip way—“she made sure it was put on Sissy.”
“You mean to tell me little Joey was born out of wedlock?” My jaw dropped after hearing the (apparently) old news about Bess and Matt Previs’s child. It was news to me since I didn’t gossip. Much.
“Sure was.” Mary Anna flipped the coffeemaker on.
“The pin is not there,” I stated.
“Not there?” Mary Anna asked. “I know I put it on her.”
Bea Allen walked in and pretended to get a coffee mug while she was eavesdropping. The look on her face told me she was enjoying this little slip-up.
“Did you find the pin?” Bess popped her head in the kitchen with an unlit cig hanging out of her mouth. “It’s almost time, Emma Lee.”
“Mary Anna assures me she put it on her chest just like Sissy wanted.” I knew there was no excuse in the world that would make up for this big mistake. “I know there is sentimental value to the family heirloom and I will find it before the burial.”
“I did put it on there,” Mary Anna huffed, pushing me aside. “I’ll show you.”
All of us followed Mary Anna to the viewing room.
She marched right on up to the casket and hovered over it like Sissy was down on her makeup table in the basement, while the rest of us stood in the doorway of the viewing room.
“I’m telling you it was right here! You can see the hole!” she screamed from the front and pointed at poor Sissy’s dead body over top of the screeching Metallica.
The entire room fell silent until a giggle came from the corner of the viewing room. The giggle turned into laughter and then an all-out guffaw. I didn’t have to look to know exactly who was taking pleasure in my pain. Charlotte Rae Raines.
I marched up to the casket with everyone’s eyes on me alongside Bess. Mary Anna was still jutting her finger toward the pin hole. She was right. The hole was there, but the pin was not.
I slid my head toward Charlotte and glared, hoping she’d stop laughing. The entire crowd looked at me as if waiting to see how I was going to handle this situation. On one side of the room I had Mary Anna screaming about the pin and on the opposite side was a hysterical Charlotte enjoying my misfortune.
To make matters worse, that darn tabby cat was standing right on top of Sissy’s casket.
I turned to face Mary Anna and tried to shoo the cat away with my hand so no one would see. The cat didn’t move. It just kept staring at Sissy.
“Scat,” I whispered under my breath.
“Well, I never.” Mary Anna drew back, stuck her fingers in her hair and fluffed it up before she turned on her heels and faced the crowd.
Granny shuffled up the aisle and greeted a few people on her way. It was her way to break up the tension in the room. She whispered a few things to Bess, who then took her spot up front with Sissy’s other kinfolk. Then Granny put her magic touch on Mary Anna, who shuffled the other way.
“The cat!” Charlotte screamed and pointed. The darn cat was curled up in the crook of Sissy’s stiff arm.
“Scat!” I screamed and shooed, trying to get the cat to scram. The cat got up, stretched, and jumped out of the casket and strolled down the aisle and out the door just as Jack Henry was coming into the vestibule.
“Emma Lee.” Granny took me by the arm. “Are you feeling okay?”
Jack Henry’s eyes met mine. There was concern on his face.
Chapter 8
Sissy’s funeral went off without a hitch according to her family, minus the pin.
Bess had come to terms that the pin was missing. She really settled down after I gave her fifty percent off the casket. It was a big chunk to take off, but a big mistake was made. I did assure her that we would try to find the pin. She did say that she didn’t put it past one of the family members to have
stolen the pin off “poor old Sissy’s dead body” because there was a rift—which was a nice way of saying a fight—in the family over the pin being buried with her.
I couldn’t rule out what Bess had said about the pin because an hour before the community viewing, I had allowed the family to view the body in private like I always do. Out of respect for their grieving, I never stayed in the room unless they asked. Whoever took it had an hour to slip it off of her.
“You seemed to be a little more emotional about Sissy than you usually are with your other clients.” Jack Henry walked down the line of chairs untying the backs of the slipcovers in the viewing room. I followed behind him taking them off and throwing them in a pile in the middle of the room so I could take them to the cleaners.
“Death just seems to be lingering.” I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject with him about that cat. “Keep an eye out for the pin, please.” I pointed to the carpet.
“Okay.” Jack’s voice faded, losing its steely edge. His eyes bore into me. He knew I was keeping something from him, but let me keep it to myself. “Did you see anyone lingering a little too close to the corpse?”
“Not that I can recall.” I shrugged and threw more of the chair covers on the pile for the dry cleaners. We have a written contract where they come and pick up the linens after each service. It helps me out a lot.
“Emma.” Jack Henry stood by the chair next to the window that overlooked the town square and a direct view of the Sleepy Hollow Inn. “The inn.”
My eyes slid over to the window and out at the blue flashing lights.
My heart stopped. I stopped and gripped the top of the folding chair with a fist full of linen.
“Oh my God. They found her.” I gulped.
“Emma Lee.” Jack stared at me. Our eyes met. I tried to swallow, only my mouth felt like it was filled with sand. “You are going to have to act surprised.”
Without thinking, I dropped the slipcover and ran as fast as I could out of the funeral home, down the concrete steps, and across the street without looking for cars passing by. The newly born spring grass lifted me as I raced across the town square, darting around the gazebo. In the distance, under the light of the inn’s front porch carriage lights, I could see two Lexington police officers standing on the porch talking to Granny. Charlotte Rae was standing next to her.