Funerals Can Be Murder (A Baby Boomer Mystery Book 5)

by Susan Santangelo

  I tucked “Community Police Academy” into the front file folder of my brain, to be referred to if necessary. If Paul was asking me questions I didn’t want to answer, maybe I could divert him.

  But Mark knew me far too well. I didn’t need my son-in-law peppering me with questions. And I wasn’t sure how Jenny would react if she was also on the receiving end of a police interrogation. Especially from her own husband.

  Things like that can really put a strain on a marriage. Or so I’ve been told.

  Of course, Jenny hadn’t actually seen the scissors. But I had.

  Careful, Carol. Don’t reveal too much information. You know how Paul loves to make you squirm every chance he gets. And if he finds out you’ve already visited Slumber Room A, who knows what conclusions he’ll jump to?

  Our conversation was mercifully cut short by the arrival of a dignified man whom I figured must be the mortician-in-chief, followed close on his heels by a young woman who looked so much like him that she had to be related.

  “Are you from the police?” the man asked Paul. “I’m Richard Mallory, the funeral home director, and this is my daughter, Melinda. She’s the one who called you. Nothing like this has ever happened in all my years as a mortician.”

  Mallory turned to his daughter and said, “Go back to the family living room and try to keep everyone calm.”

  “I don’t know how you expect me to do that,” Melinda said, looking as frazzled as she must have felt. “The widow has already seen her husband and is freaking out.”

  Her father frowned. “You’ll think of something. Just go,” Mallory said through tight lips. “Now.”

  Then to Paul, Jenny, and me, Mallory said, “There’s an irregularity with the client in Slumber Room A. Follow me, please.”

  OMG, he thinks Jenny and I are with the police, too.

  Under other circumstances, I would have been thrilled to be mistaken for a member of Fairport’s finest, to say nothing about sitting in on an official questioning that didn’t have me on the hot seat. But since I was the first person to view what Mallory referred to as an “irregularity,” I certainly didn’t want to let that fact slip out by mistake.

  Just in case I was accused of causing said “irregularity.”

  Paul pointed his thumb at Jenny and me and said, “They’re not part of the Fairport police force.”

  I, of course, immediately had to jump in and explain why we were at the wake in the first place.

  “My husband and I were customers of Mr. Finnegan’s landscaping company,” I said. “My daughter and I,” gesturing to Jenny, “came to pay our respects to the family. We’re not involved in any way with whatever the ‘irregularity’ might be. In fact, we hardly knew the man.”

  I was babbling, but I didn’t care.

  I grabbed Jenny by the arm. “So I guess we can leave now. We already signed the guest book. Come on, sweetie. Let’s go.”

  “Stay here,” Paul ordered. “Until I find out what this is all about, nobody’s going anywhere.”

  Rats.

  Chapter 15

  I don’t lie. I speak creatively.

  “You got home much later than I expected last night, Carol,” Jim said as I poured out a bowl of granola, topped with some fresh blueberries and skim milk (yuck!), and set it down in front of him.

  We’re trying to eat healthier these days. And for someone whose breakfast of choice is high fat and high calorie content, like me, it’s torture. But I try hard not to complain. After all, when a person reaches a certain age, and a heart attack or stroke may be in the not-too-distant future, well…you get the idea.

  I considered my possible responses as I prepared my own breakfast— fresh fruit and yogurt, topped with granola. I knew I’d be starving in about an hour, but I could always have an apple. Or an apple muffin.

  “Jenny and I were delayed,” I said, choosing my words with extra care.

  Oh, what the heck. Jim was going to find out about the Finnegan wake one way or the other. He might as well hear my version of events first.

  “Did you two have a girls’ night out after the wake?” Jim asked. “If you went out to dinner, I hope it was our treat.”

  “We never met the Finnegan family,” I said. “In hindsight, I wish we hadn’t gone at all. You were right, Jim. I should have stayed home and we could have sent a donation to the American Heart Association in Will’s memory.”

  “Give me a minute or two to commit this to memory,” Jim said. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. After all these years, you’re finally admitting that I was right about something?”

  Normally, I would have had a snappy comeback to my husband’s teasing. But this morning, I wasn’t up to it. I pushed my breakfast bowl away, my appetite suddenly gone as I remembered poor Will.

  “Something unexpected happened before the wake actually began,” I said. “Jenny and I were the first ones to sign the guest book, and we waited a while, but no one else came. So we went to the women’s room. While we were in there, we heard a scream. And the next thing we knew, that odious Paul Wheeler from the Fairport police came and shut the wake down.”

  “What? You’re not making any sense, Carol. Why would the police shut down a wake?”

  I took a fortifying sip of coffee and prayed my stomach would accept it without complaint. And then I told him about the scissors in Will’s chest. Of course, I left out the fact that I had seen the scissors myself. No sense in confusing the guy.

  And I hadn’t shared that information with Paul Wheeler, either.

  In my defense, lest you think that I deliberately misled the police, I took a hint from all those Perry Mason television shows. Perry always told his clients not to offer any extraneous facts. Just answer the questions.

  So that’s why I didn’t tell Paul about seeing Deanna, either. Because, well, maybe I was mistaken, and it was just someone who looked like her.

  “That’s why the wake was shut down,” I said. “Until the police can figure out if a crime was committed, there won’t be any wake. Or funeral.”

  Jim sighed. “And you, of course, are right in the middle of this thing. Once again.”

  He waggled his finger at me. “I know you, Carol. I bet you want to nose around and find out who did this to poor Will. Don’t you dare try to ‘help’ the police this time, Carol. Promise me.”

  Jim had asked one of the questions that had been rolling around in my brain since last night. Who’d done this? And, even more intriguing, why?

  Honestly, I had no intention of, as my husband so quaintly put it, “nosing around.” But it wasn’t a bad idea. I did, after all, know more of the key players than the police.

  So I changed tactics and went on the offensive.

  “That was uncalled for,” I snapped back. “It’s not my fault if I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. How was I supposed to know that something like this would happen?”

  “That may be true,” Jim said. “But I bet you’re the only one who secretly harbors a yen to be an undercover detective. So, I repeat, stay out of it.”

  “Of course I will, Jim,” I said. I hoped he didn’t notice that my fingers were crossed underneath my napkin.

  Chapter 16

  I never nag. I offer helpful suggestions. Repeatedly.

  What I’m going to tell you next is guaranteed to surprise you. Heck, it even surprised me.

  After my initial childish fit of pique, I thought long and hard about what Jim had said. Not the “Don’t get involved” part, which made my hackles rise every time I thought of it. The part about my secretly harboring a yen to become an undercover detective.

  Because I really didn’t have a secret longing to become a detective. At least, not consciously.

  But SJR (Since Jim’s Retirement), bad things just seemed to happen which involved me, whether I liked it or not. To
friends of mine. And immediate family members, in case my dear husband forgot that particular incident. And I’m a very helpful person. A fixer. I want to make everybody happy. Peace on earth and everything right with the world and all that stuff.

  I’m also a very curious person. Some may call me nosy, but I’m sure they’re just jealous because I have the nerve to ask the questions they’d love to, but never would.

  I’m also an excellent judge of character (most of the time), and people talk to me. In fact, sometimes complete strangers tell me things about their personal life that I’d rather not know.

  And when I really thought about this “incident,” I realized that I didn’t know Will Finnegan well at all. He’d done some work for Jim and me, but we weren’t exactly close buddies.

  Yes, what happened at his wake was horrible. But just because I happened to be there did not mean I had to figure out who did the deed.

  Especially because, if I did decide to nose around, I might find out some nasty things about a very important person in my life, Deanna. I had already worked very hard to convince myself that the person I saw leaving Will’s wake was a Deanna lookalike, not Deanna herself.

  My rational side (the one I never listen to) told me that was impossible. Nobody else in Fairport looked like her. So I turned that side of my mind completely off. Click.

  And I succeeded, too. For about an hour.

  I needed a distraction, and for me, retail therapy often does the trick. Just getting out in a crowd of people, overhearing some incredibly intimate conversations from other shoppers shared via cell phone, and spending a little money, is a guaranteed pick-me-up. It doesn’t even matter what I’m shopping for—clothing, something for the house, dog food, people food.

  Yes, that was it. Food shopping. Because when I’d checked the larder earlier today, the pickings were pretty slim. In fact, I hadn’t done much of anything in the domesticity department since Jim’s battle with the sniffles.

  I took a quick shower, then it was time for me to make a grocery list. I found myself humming as I wrote: “Eggs, milk, whole wheat bread.”

  I realized I was humming a song from South Pacific, the beloved musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and one of my all-time favorite shows.

  I added shampoo to the shopping list. And then it hit me.

  My sneaky subconscious was playing games with me. I was humming “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair.” Which, of course, brought me right back to the Deanna dilemma.

  What if it turned out that she was really at the funeral home? On the face of it, that wasn’t so problematic. After all, I didn’t know who Deanna’s friends were. In fact, I didn’t know much about her personal life at all. When I’m at the hair salon, I’m the one who shares all my secrets, and Deanna responds when she feels it’s necessary.

  Maybe she knew the Finnegan family. Maybe Will’s widow was another client of hers. Or—and this was really a stretch—maybe Will Finnegan was. I’ve read online (so you know it must be true) that more and more men these days are turning their backs on traditional barbershops and frequenting hair salons, instead. The male ego—especially when it comes to looking younger—can be just as fragile as the female’s.

  Not that I know this from personal experience, understand. My own dear husband’s hairline receded so quickly, so early in our marriage, that I can’t remember when he ever had lush locks.

  My mind was racing now with even more questions. Questions I didn’t dare ask. Like, if Deanna did know Will or the Finnegan family, why did she leave the funeral home before the official wake began? And who was that group of people leaving with her?

  Was she making a hasty exit before any of the family arrived and saw her?

  It wasn’t up to me to point a finger at her. J’accuse!

  But I couldn’t deny that the instrument which had inexplicably found its way into Will’s chest was a scissors. An integral part of every hairstylist’s tool kit.

  I hadn’t talked to Jenny since I dropped her off at home after the wake. I value her opinion—she takes after the level-headed side of the family. I wondered what her take on last night’s disaster was.

  Only one way to find out. I knew that, if she was already in class, my call would roll over into her voice mail and she’d call me back when she could.

  I had my hand on the telephone, prepared to punch in her cell number, when I realized this could be a very bad idea. Jenny was married to a police detective, after all. And I didn’t want to know if they’d had a conversation about Finnegan’s wake. Because if they had, I was sure that Jenny would have told Mark that I had seen the scissors myself. In fact, except for the person who put them there, I had seen the scissors before anyone else.

  And Mark-the-detective would want to know why I hadn’t told Paul Wheeler that.

  Rats. I could be in trouble already and not even know it. Perry Mason may have given me bad advice if I were accused of deliberately hiding evidence from the police. And he wouldn’t be around to take my case, either, since his television show had been cancelled a long time ago.

  AARGH. I was driving myself crazy. Not much of a stretch.

  The house was very quiet, and I suddenly realized that, except for Lucy and Ethel, I was all alone. Where the heck was Jim?

  Don’t get me wrong. Under normal circumstances, I’m thrilled to have some alone time. SJR, even though we have a large house, Jim and I often seem to be in the exact same space—usually the kitchen—reaching for the exact same thing at the exact same time.

  I folded the shopping list and jammed it into my purse. It was time to get out of here.

  I scribbled a note for Jim and propped it up against the microwave, where I was sure he’d see it. Because, even though he could disappear without a word to me, he had a fit when he didn’t know where I was. Especially around mealtime.

  Gone food shopping. Yes, I have coupons with me.

  Jim never minds supporting the local economy as long as he thinks I’m being thrifty.

  “You behave yourselves while I’m out,” I warned Lucy and Ethel. “No jumping on the bed to take a snooze. I can always tell when you’ve been there. You rearrange the pillows.”

  I made sure there was fresh water in their bowls, grabbed my car keys and headed out the door.

  Where I came face-to-face with Will Finnegan.

  Chapter 17

  We got married for better or for worse. He couldn’t do any better, and I couldn’t do any worse.

  I screamed loud enough to be heard in Canada.

  Well, can you blame me? I’d just seen the guy at Mallory and Mallory Funeral Home the night before, and he was not looking his best.

  And now the ghost of Will was standing here, wearing a grey sweatshirt and jeans, looking as healthy and handsome as he always did.

  In my very own driveway. In broad daylight.

  I do believe in reincarnation, but I never realized it could happen so fast.

  The man and I took a step back from each other. He seemed just as startled as I was, although, to his credit, he didn’t scream. But he didn’t speak, either. He just stood there, looking at me.

  “Will? Is that you?” I squeaked. “But, you’re dead.”

  At least, you sure looked that way last night.

  The man offered me his hand and I shrank back. No way did I want to touch an apparition.

  “I’m so sorry I frightened you, ma’am,” he said. “I should have knocked on the side door first, to tell you I was here.”

  What? Do ghosts knock first? I mean, I’d heard of things that go bump in the night, but not during the day.

  “I’m not handling myself very well,” he said. “I’m not Will Finnegan. I’m his younger brother, Jack.”

  The man offered me his hand again. “You can shake my hand, and you’ll know I’m real.”

  I flushed
with embarrassment. How stupid could I be?

  Please, don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

  “That’s not necessary,” I said. “I can tell you’re a live person. But you look so much like Will. You gave me a real fright!”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jack repeated. “Will and I do look enough alike to pass as twins.” His face saddened. “I mean, we did look enough alike. We were only ten months apart. Our parents called us Vatican twins. Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. I didn’t have sixteen years of Catholic school education for nothing!

  “Sometimes, we even fooled our teachers. At least, we did when we were little kids. That came in very handy sometimes.” Jack smiled at the memory.

  I took a closer look at Jack and realized that, while the resemblance to his deceased brother was striking, there were subtle differences. While Will had the lean torso of a man who regularly worked outdoors, Jack was fleshier. Paunchier around the middle. Not that he was fat, mind you. Just, softer. And while Will’s eyes were a dark brown, Jack’s eyes were more hazel.

  I realized suddenly how rude I was being. And that I hadn’t introduced myself, either.

  “It’s my turn to apologize to you,” I said. “I’m Carol Andrews. Your brother’s company does landscaping work for us.”

  A sudden, selfish thought struck me. “Will the company still be in business?” I asked. “I mean, now that….” My voice trailed off.

  Sheesh, Carol. That’s the least of Jack’s problems. He doesn’t care about doing your lawn, for heaven’s sake.

  I recovered my wits enough to say, “I’m so sorry for your loss. My daughter and I came to the wake last night to express our condolences to the family, but we never got the chance.”

  “Yes, that sure was something,” Jack said. “Somebody wanted to make extra sure that Will wouldn’t be coming back.”