The Remains of the Dead

by Wendy Roberts

  Zack ordered a heaping pile of nachos to go with their beers. After he’d eaten most of the chips, he got up to go.

  “I’m beat,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “See ya in the morning,” Sadie echoed.

  She ordered a second beer but hardly drank any of it. She was looking around the pub and wondering if Grant and Trudy Toth had ever come here. That led her to wonder if Kent Lasko had joined them.

  She knew she should leave, but she didn’t feel like heading to her empty home. She approached the bartender and asked if she could take a look at his phone book. After he handed it to her, she quickly found the listing for Kent Lasko, the one with the disconnected phone. She figured if the number was disconnected it meant either that he’d moved since the number went in the white pages or that he’d changed his number and was still living there. She jotted down the street address and returned the phone book to the bartender.

  Curiosity got the better of her and she decided to drive over. On the way, she told herself there was a good chance Kent had moved. Still, when she pulled up to the address and saw lights on inside the house, excitement raced through her. There was no way she would be able to sleep for wondering if he still lived in the house or if the new owner knew Kent Lasko’s current address.

  The rain was torrential now, and getting to the front door was like running through a waterfall. Just as she was about to knock, she heard footsteps and turned to face a man coming up behind her with keys in his hand.

  Her face fell. This guy wasn’t Kent Lasko. This guy was blond but thinner, taller, and a few years younger than the man she’d met. He was dressed in a designer running outfit and was obviously just returning from jogging.

  “I’m looking for Kent Lasko. He used to live here.”

  “He still does,” the young man replied. He stepped in front of her and opened the door.

  “Hey, Kent, there’s some lady here for you,” he called. He turned to Sadie. “Come in.”

  “I’m fine,” Sadie replied, choosing to remain on the front steps in the rain.

  “Suit yourself.”

  The young man stepped inside, bent and untied his expensive jogging shoes, and tugged his dripping nylon hoodie over his head.

  Kent Lasko walked around the corner from the hall. His mouth dropped in a fleeting look of surprise that was quickly replaced by a cool, practiced smile that made Sadie’s skin crawl.

  5

  “Hello, I’m Kent. You probably know that since you obviously tracked me down.” He stuck out his hand and offered a charming smile to go with it.

  Sadie gave his fingers a quick squeeze.

  “You were working at Trudy’s house, right?” he asked. “It’s a little hard to recognize you out of your blue astronaut suit.”

  Sadie nodded. “I’m Sadie Novak.” She held her hand over her eyes to shield her face from the rain. “I tried calling you, but your phone number was disconnected.”

  “We had our number changed recently. Oh, and this guy who loves to run in the rain is my brother, Christian.” Kent nodded to his brother. “Christian, Sadie here is working on cleaning Grant’s house.”

  Christian’s immediate reaction was to look appalled, but he recovered his manners, said hello, and offered his hand. When she shook it, Sadie noticed his eyes quickly appraised her damp shirt.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “The Toths were very nice people. It’s a shame what happened.”

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed.

  “I’m going to go change,” he said and excused himself, disappearing inside the house.

  Then there was an awkward pause. She knew she should tell Kent Lasko why she’d tracked him down, but she hadn’t really planned on actually finding him, so her confidence was a bit shaken.

  “It’s pouring. Come inside.” He waved his hand and stepped aside to allow her entry. “My brother loves the rain, but personally, I think this weather is only great for crazy joggers and ducks.”

  “That’s okay. Really,” Sadie replied. Because you’re either a looter or a freak, and neither option appeals to me, even if you do have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “How can I help you, then, Miss Novak?”

  “You can tell me what you were doing inside the Toth house.”

  “I should’ve explained myself at the time, but truthfully, you didn’t seem much interested. Maybe you were too involved in your work?”

  “Yes.” Well, that and the fact that I thought you were a ghost.

  “It’s no secret that I was friends with Trudy and Grant. More so with Trudy, I guess, and I was there to—”

  “But you were Grant’s best man, so why would you be closer to Trudy?”

  “Wow, you really checked me out thoroughly.” His eyebrows rose in amusement.

  Sadie’s cheeks heated even as a large drop of rain rolled off the tip of her nose.

  “I saw you in their wedding picture.”

  “Right.” He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “It’s not really the kind of thing I want to talk about with a stranger, even if that stranger happens to be a particularly nice-looking woman who looks like she might drown on my doorstep.”

  Sadie’s blush deepened, but she recovered quickly and squared her shoulders.

  “You don’t owe me an explanation, but I don’t allow people in the house when I’m cleaning up a crime scene. And the police—well, I’m sure they wouldn’t approve of the idea, either,” she said coolly. “If you don’t have a good reason for being inside the Toth house, then I’ll need to notify the authorities.”

  “Wow, you’re one tough cookie.” He smiled appreciatively. “Okay, if you come in out of the pouring rain, I promise to tell you why I was inside their house.”

  Sadie didn’t want to ignore all her mother’s warnings about not going into a strange man’s house, but she couldn’t bear to be drenched further. She suggested they go for coffee to talk.

  “Do you know Holly’s?” he asked.

  She said she did and they agreed to meet there. Sadie hustled back to her car. She reached the coffee shop first and ducked into the ladies’ room and dried off with paper towels. Next she got her coffee and searched for a table that wasn’t already occupied by a person with a laptop. She’d just sat down and had taken a few sips from her latte when Kent showed up. He got his own coffee and a slice of apple pie, then joined her at the small corner table.

  “Great weather, huh?” he commented.

  “Awful.”

  “Have some of my pie.”

  He offered Sadie her own fork, but she declined. She didn’t want to make small talk.

  “Tell me what you were doing at the Toth house.”

  “Right.” He began fishing in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  For all I know, this guy killed Trudy and Grant and then made it look like a murder-suicide, she thought. He could be pulling out the knife he used to kill Trudy. She tensed.

  “The truth is that I was in Trudy’s house to get this,” Kent said, unwrapping a square of white tissue paper to reveal a stunning emerald pendant on a thick gold chain. It was amazing. Much nicer than a sharp knife used as a murder weapon.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “The necklace belonged to my mother. Mom is a good friend of Sylvia Toth’s.”

  “So Trudy somehow got it, and you thought you’d reclaim it for your mother before people started going through and dividing up the estate?”

  Sadie was disappointed that he’d turned out to be a looter after all. Such a shame, because she was pretty sure from the way his denim shirt clung to his chest that the muscles beneath were rock solid. She cleared her throat when she realized that she was staring and forced herself to look down at her coffee instead of at his body. Damn, it had been a long time since she’d felt instant attraction to a man.

  He was watching her, obviously weighing his next comment. Finally he continued. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you the tr
uth. You’re not a friend of the family or anything, right?”

  “Right. Just an employee hired by Sylvia Toth.”

  “Well…Trudy and I had an affair.”

  “Oh.” Great. The guy’s a looter and a home wrecker.

  “It was a long time ago, but I gave her my mother’s necklace when it looked like she was going to leave Grant. When she decided to stay and make the marriage work, well, I didn’t have the nerve to ask for it back. After what happened, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew that when the time came to go through the stuff in the house, Sylvia would recognize the necklace and would ask questions about how and why Trudy had it.”

  “If it was a long time ago, how did you know she still had it? She could’ve pawned the necklace or even lost it or gotten rid of it.”

  Sadie focused on the pendant and found herself mesmerized by its antique beauty. The intricate gold was like lace around the emeralds, which glowed in the restaurant’s lighting. She watched as Kent wrapped it again and then fisted it in his hand before he stuffed it back in his pocket.

  “I didn’t know for certain that she still had it, but she once told me she was keeping it locked inside her file cabinet so that Grant wouldn’t find it. I knew she also kept a spare house key in the garden shed, so I went to the house and got the necklace.”

  “You shouldn’t have been going through her things.”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “Trust me, it wasn’t easy going inside that house.” He swallowed nervously. “But I really was only trying to protect Trudy’s reputation. She wouldn’t have wanted their families to think less of her, even in death.”

  Sadie frowned. Somehow she doubted that Trudy was haunting her own house because she was worried about her reputation.

  “What happened to them was horrible. God, it broke my heart when I heard about it.” His voice was thick with emotion, and he shook his head slowly from side to side. “I never would’ve thought Grant was capable of such a thing.”

  Sadie thought of Trudy’s scrawled Not Grant. It could’ve simply been the ghost’s utter denial of what had happened, or even wishful thinking. Somehow neither sounded right. She shuddered despite the hot coffee in her hands.

  “So this is your full-time job? Cleaning crime scenes?” he asked, eyeing her curiously.

  “Crime scenes and unattended deaths. We’re officially known as bio-recovery technicians. Scene-2-Clean is my own company. I started it a few years ago.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how on earth does a beautiful woman end up doing such an ugly job?”

  His warm expression invited confidence.

  “My line of work isn’t exactly for everyone, but I like to think the job chose me.”

  He nodded as if that made perfect sense.

  “What do you do?” she asked politely.

  “I’m a real estate agent.”

  They talked about the burgeoning Seattle real estate market, the upcoming Seahawks game against the 49ers, and eventually the conversation wound back around to her occupation.

  “I guess your line of work isn’t exactly seasonal,” he remarked.

  “People die all year,” Sadie said

  Sadie liked Kent Lasko. She enjoyed the casual drawl of his voice, the striking blue of his eyes, and his toned body. The longer she talked with him, the more she found she didn’t really care that he’d had an affair with Trudy Toth. After all, it was really none of her business.

  “I should probably go,” she said, getting to her feet.

  He stood and helped her into her jacket in a gesture that smacked of a familiarity that wasn’t totally unwelcome. She couldn’t help but be disappointed that she had no reason to get his new phone number.

  Kent had parked his car close to hers. Just as she was about to open her door, he called out, “Would you agree to dinner with me this week?”

  Before jumping at the opportunity, Sadie quickly calculated whether or not this would be a conflict with her cleaning of the Toth house. Since Kent was neither the person who hired her nor the deceased she was mopping up, she saw no reason to say no. The niggling self-doubt was also put to rest by assuring herself that she would be with him in a public place.

  “I’d like that.”

  They quickly set the date for two evenings later, exchanged phone numbers, and then she got behind the wheel. As she drove home, she found herself singing along to a love song on the radio, and the icy downpour didn’t dampen her spirits at all.

  True to her word, Sadie was up and at the Toth house early, but as early as she was, Zack had managed to beat her there. He was obviously trying to make up for missing a day, for which Sadie was grateful.

  “We’re ahead of the game this morning.”

  She looked around the master bedroom, moving easily without the restriction of the stage one gear. Signs of trauma had been eliminated, and now the room just looked like any other renovation.

  Sadie tried not to give Zack any sign that Trudy was in the house with them. She respected the fact that doing crime-scene cleaning was hard enough without having some half-crazy boss chatting with the dead around you.

  While they worked in the master bedroom, Sadie occasionally looked up to find Trudy standing in the bedroom doorway. Whenever she glanced her way, Trudy made nodding or waving gestures, as if she wanted Sadie to follow her in the direction of the upstairs den. Sadie was tempted, but Zack was working so efficiently that she didn’t want to interrupt the flow by skipping off with Trudy. Instead, she discreetly stole an occasional glance at the woman while she continued her work.

  “Okay, tell me what the hell’s going on,” Zack growled. He straightened and fisted his hands on his hips.

  “What? Nothing,” Sadie stammered.

  “Bullshit. You’ve been looking over your shoulder all morning. It’s driving me nuts.”

  So much for her attempt at being discreet. Sadie started to repeat that nothing was going on, but the look of annoyance on Zack’s face changed her mind.

  “Trudy wants me to follow her into the den.”

  He grimaced. “And she told you this?”

  “Well, no. She’s not the talkative type, but she’s been waving me over.”

  He sighed, looked heavenward, and made shooing motions. “Go ahead, then. You and your ghost go play. Get it over with so we can get back to work.”

  “Right.” Sadie nodded sharply. She got to her feet and stepped quietly around the corner to follow Trudy down the hall.

  “You’re getting me in trouble,” Sadie grumbled to the phantom’s back. “Good employees are hard to find in this business, you know. Never mind hard—they’re damn near impossible. Zack’s been very tolerant of this kind of stuff, but who knows how long that can continue.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Zack spoke up from behind her.

  Sadie turned and bumped into him. She jumped backward, embarrassed and surprised that he’d overheard her.

  “I was curious, so I decided to check out the den, too,” he admitted sheepishly.

  The office was meticulous, with the exception of a fine layer of dust that coated everything, since the room had gone unused for the last few weeks.

  “That’s one helluva fancy phone,” Zack commented.

  It had caught Sadie’s eye as well. Funny that she hadn’t noticed it when she’d been in the room to get the insurance papers.

  “Looks like one of those videoconferencing things,” she remarked. “Grant must’ve used it for his job. Certainly Trudy wouldn’t have needed it. Sylvia told me she was a schoolteacher.”

  Trudy stood over by a four-drawer wooden filing cabinet in the corner, the same cabinet where Kent would’ve found the necklace. Trudy’s hands made motions of attempting to open the top drawer, but her grip only passed through the handle. She tossed back her head and let out a loud moan of frustration.

  Sadie walked over, opened the drawer, and looked in at nearly a dozen files.

  “Okay, help me out here,” she said
.

  “What do you want me to do?” Zack asked.

  “I was talking to Trudy. Sorry.”

  He nodded. “I think I’ll go back to the bedroom,” he said in an I-can’t-handle-this tone.

  “Well?” Sadie asked, but Trudy just pointed at the buff letter-sized files.

  Near as Sadie could tell, the folders held only household bills.

  “Talk about organized,” Sadie muttered as she pulled out a few folders and flipped through their contents. The first was labeled AUTO EXPENSES and contained everything from gas receipts to repair expenses. The next two files had expenses to do with renovating the house.

  “Hey, I’m not an accountant,” Sadie called out.

  When she went to stuff the folders back in the drawer, she noticed a large gold envelope on the bottom of the drawer. Trudy was pointing excitedly.

  “This?” Sadie asked.

  Trudy nodded, and Sadie pulled the envelope out and opened it. It was filled with telephone bills.

  “You want me to look at your phone bills?” she asked Trudy, watching the woman’s face closely.

  Trudy nodded emphatically.

  “Thinking of changing your long-distance carrier?” Sadie joked, and Trudy rolled her eyes, an unexpectedly human gesture for a ghost, and then she faded away.

  With the envelope tucked under her arm, Sadie walked down the hall and back into the bedroom.

  “So?” Zack asked from the corner, where he was vacuuming up dead flies and maggots.

  “She wants me to look at the phone records.”

  He nodded, pretending that this was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Why don’t you bring it with you while we get something to eat? I’m starved.”

  “You’re always starved.”

  “You’re never starved,” he countered.

  Zack was hell-bent on Tex-Mex, so they headed for Pesco’s Taco Lounge. The place was a loud singles club at night but was great for lunch.

  They decided on green-chile enchiladas, and Zack ate most of both their plates while Sadie scanned the phone records. She looked over the pages, but nothing jumped out and said Aha! At least not until she examined them a second time.