So she’d go see Tom. And would respect his efficiency by offering to buy him an early dinner in the process. Because he’d probably like a meeting/eating combo. Because of the efficiency!
But you don’t give a shit about eff—
Efficiency!
Twenty
THE LIST
Update Tom
Call union rep back
Order black dress
Lotion
Stay up late to avoid faux-prophetic dreams about Danielle
“Well, hiya!”
Ava blinked. Apparently when you came to the morgue during reasonable hours (as opposed to following the coroner like an easily distracted stalker having an ice-cream-truck flashback), you were greeted by a pleasant young woman who exuded positivity and favored pastels.
“What can I do for ya?” Argh, so much bright-eyed enthusiasm! And pink! She was wearing a pale pink silk T-shirt beneath a darker pink blazer, which should have made her look like an inverted tulip, but instead the contrast with her dark skin was striking in all the best ways. She was the picture of health, too, with blueish corneas, dark eyes, and a bright smile. She looked like she spent her spare time shooting commercials touting the benefits of drinking milk.
“Hi. My name’s Ava Capp. I’m hoping to see Dr. Baker.” Before the assistant could chirp the inevitable question, she added, “I don’t have an appointment. But it’ll only take a minute.” Unless I take him to an early supper, in which case it could take hours. Maybe days! Wait, what’s my endgame here?
“Actually, Doc Baker’s just finishing up some paperwork before heading out. Let me just check in and see—aaiiee!”
“Hello, Ava.”
The assistant, Darla Tran if the nameplate was accurate, had twisted around in her chair to glare up at Tom. “Swear to God, Doc, I’m putting a bell around your neck!”
“No, thank you. I would find that intensely irritating.”
“Ya know what else is intensely irritating?”
“You did sort of loom up out of nowhere,” Ava pointed out. “I didn’t even hear you walk over.”
“It’s my footwear.” Tom smiled down at his feet. “These particular soles muffle my footsteps.”
“Oh. That’s great, I guess. If gliding noiselessly through the morgue is the goal.”
“It’s like working for a cat,” Darla declared. “A clumsy one.” Ava made a great effort and did not snicker. “No offense, boss.”
“None taken. Ava, you wished to see me?”
“Yeah, if you’re not busy. Or at least not too busy. I thought of something that might be useful.”
He tilted his head and studied her. She must have been downwind (did you still call it “downwind” when there was no discernible wind?), because she realized all over again how good he smelled, like soap and clean skin. And how the hell did he manage that, given his day job?
Darla must have been wondering the same, because she tilted her head to one side and asked, “You napped in one of the drawers again, didn’t you, Doc?”
“Abe maintains he can effectively cool our home by simply closing all the curtains. This is false. The air-conditioning unit arrives the day after tomorrow.”
Slept … in one of the drawers. Slept in one of the drawers? THE DRAWERS? Oh my God, he’s so weird and cool. Literally.
“How … how does that work?” Did he keep pajamas at work, too? And a toothbrush? Did he set an alarm? Had someone ever mistaken him for a dead body? So many questions.
He blinked. “I get sleepy. I lie down. I rest. I rise.”
It’s aliiiiiiiiive! “Yep, sounds about right,” Ava lied, because it sounded deeply screwed.
“I’d say it isn’t as weird as it sounds,” Darla said, “but that would be a big fat fib.”
“Ava, you have information you think might be useful?”
“Huh? Oh. Sorry. Distracted by the reveal of your nap habits. But yeah, I had some thoughts.”
“I’d like to hear them.”
“Oh. Yes. Well…” Do I just blurt out my dream right here in front of Darla? See if I can damage her positive outlook? Although if her boss snoozing with the cadavers didn’t damage it, what the hell would? An audit? Plague? “Did you want to grab a bite? And talk it over?”
“Oooooh!” From Darla. “A meal and a meeting. Together! So efficient! She’s got your number, boss.”
“Literally,” Ava added, holding up her phone. She’d already put Doc Baker in her contacts. “Darla, did you call him Doc Baker? That’s awesome.”
“Right? My grandma’s a huge Little House on the Prairie fan.”
“Which makes no sense,” Tom pointed out. “Dr. Baker worked on the living.” Before Ava could ask: “Darla has regaled me at length about the fictional characters—”
“Hey! Some of them were real people, ya know!”
“—of Walnut Grove, Minnesota.”
“I’m sure Doc Baker did all kinds of things, including pathology. Walnut Grove wasn’t exactly a thriving metropolis.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
Oh my God, now we’re talking about shows that have been off the air for forty years and then I’m taking him out for a meal and to figuratively show him my dream journal and a normal person would find this incredibly weird and off-putting so just WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME that I think it’s intriguing?
“Tell ya what,” Darla said. “You seem like a nice lady and the boss here has done me a few favors—”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Tom interrupted. “I don’t understand why you’re assigning more weight to this than it’s worth.”
“He got my abusive ex to skedaddle out of town,” Darla explained, which wasn’t any of Ava’s business but which she loved hearing about regardless. “And when I was about to get kicked out of my apartment, he got me a loan. And remember when you let Billy crash on your couch for a week?” To Ava: “Billy’s the night guy. Nasty divorce.”
“She’s right,” Ava said. “That’s above and beyond standard boss stuff.”
Tom shrugged and looked down, and it was adorable to see such a big guy behaving like a bashful kid embarrassed by praise.
“Check out Konichi-ha,” Darla suggested, oblivious to Ava’s sudden, internal screaming. “It’s that sushi place / comedy club on University.”
“Hard pass.” Nothing against Darla, or sushi, but Ava knew she’d rather do PCP, weed, cocaine, ecstasy, benzos, oxy, and PCP than sit through amateur hour at any comedy club. It wasn’t the up-and-coming entertainers who depressed her, it was the hecklers. They were brutal and always made Ava feel like she should go up and give the performer a hug. It made enjoying the meal next to impossible. It made belly landings seem like an effortless task. “No offense.”
“Dixie’s on Grand?”
“That’ll do.”
Tom nodded. “Excellent. It may interest you to know that in 2014, a body was—”
“No-no-no-no!” Darla had clapped her hands over her ears. “Please. Boss. I’m beggin’ ya. Don’t ruin another restaurant for me.”
“It wasn’t the restaurant; it was the parking lot,” he explained with long-suffering patience. “And the victim had no connection to the restaurant.”
“Tell me on the way,” Ava said. “I’d love to hear it. I know that sounds deeply strange.”
“It’s the only thing about this job I don’t love,” Darla said.
“Really?” Ava couldn’t help asking. “The only thing?”
“Yup.”
“The only thing?”
“Yes.”
“Darla, I’m leaving for the day. Once you’ve finished that clinic note, the remainder of the day is yours.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”
“That’s why I hired you,” he replied. “I never have to repeat myself.”
“Have I ever told you, you’re the most literal person I’ve ever worked for?”
“Many times, Darla, including twice this week.”
“Well, you kids have fun. Nice to meet ya, Ava.” Darla turned back to her computer with a flourish and was immediately engrossed in whatever-it-was.
“Dixie’s, then?”
“Dixie’s then.”
Twenty-One
Dixie’s was a cheerful restaurant on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul, specializing in Southern cuisine and, to use the colloquialism, comfort food. Although what was comforting about carb overload and rising cholesterol levels had always escaped him.
After minimal discussion, Ava led them to the farthest, quietest corner, though it was a beautiful day and Dixie’s had outdoor seating. Since she did not strike him as the type content to lurk in corners (at least not during meals), he briefly wondered if she had done it to accommodate him.
This was confusing, which he did not appreciate. Was Ava Capp genuinely thoughtful and charming and funny and a lovely kisser or was she a machine who could perfectly mimic being thoughtful, charming, and funny and a lovely kisser? And how does one mimic being funny?
“So your assistant is a ray of sunshine.” Ava said this between wolfing down slices of fried green tomatoes. “And I say that with total sincerity.”
“Isn’t she?” When he thought about it, Tom felt downright gleeful. “She is surrounded by the dead—”
“Right?”
“—and works for a man frequently elbow-deep in corpses—”
“Gross.”
“—and to the best of my knowledge, has never caught so much as a cold or been unhappy on shift.”
“Wait, never?”
“It’s the incongruity that pleases me,” Tom explained.
“Yep. Lots of incongruity going on there.” She took a gulp of lemonade, paused, then swigged down more and set the glass down with a decisive thump. “Could I ask you something?”
Do not say it. Do not say it. Do not say it. “You realize you just have, yes?” Dang.
“Fair enough. It’s none of my business, but did you really put the smackdown on her ex?”
“I did not. I merely inserted myself between That Boy and Darla.” And broke his jaw, when That Boy had the abysmally bad idea to reach around Tom to hurt Darla.
“That Boy?”
“True men do not hit their loved ones. And they certainly don’t follow them to their place of employment and shout and grab and knock things over.”
“Scumbag,” she agreed.
He hadn’t thought his actions were at all unusual, so Darla’s tearful thanks had come as a surprise. So had the pans of apple crisp she started bringing him every couple of weeks. (He had a lethal affinity for fruit crumbles of all kind.)
To Tom, the situation could be distilled to an equation. Abusive significant other + tearful employee = forcibly remove abusive significant other + help tearful employee with restraining order paperwork. Although he no longer thought of Darla as an employee. He’d discussed the situation with Abe, who had explained the concept of “work friend,” which was therefore how he now categorized Darla.
“So the reason I stopped by, Tom. I had a dream. A bad one.” She helped herself to some catfish but was now devouring appetizers with a more pensive, uneasy air. If it was an act, it was outstanding. “And it made me remember something. I think Danielle knew she was in big trouble. I think she knew she had a killer sniffing up her back trail.”
“Oh?” He gave himself a few seconds to mull over her words. “The police asked her friends, family, teachers, and the like if she had any enemies. They all—you included—denied it.”
“I know. Because she didn’t. Besides, if anyone had said otherwise, you would have remembered reading about it. Because you can’t let Danielle go, which means way too much to me to be able to explain.”
“That is … kind of you.” It was absurd, absurd, how much that comment warmed him. He had decided years ago that conforming and complimenting was not as valuable as gaining knowledge, and for the most part that still held true.
But. It was Ava.
Again: absurd. You’ve known her less than a week. But as his late sister had once explained, an absurdity didn’t mean it wasn’t actually happening. Just that it was difficult to believe.
Ava seemed content to let him think, or she was happy devouring the rest of the catfish basket. After another minute, he asked, “Why would you tell me this?”
“Huh?” The waitress had topped off her lemonade, and Ava paused midgulp. “You kidding?”
“Almost never.”
She stared back, perplexed. “Why wouldn’t I tell you? It wasn’t in your files because you only had my original statement. Ten years ago, I was as blindsided as anyone.”
“Were you?”
Her dark blond brows arched. “Yeah. Sorry, did I not make that clear? About the blindsiding? We were all shocked and horrified and I threw up a little at the crime scene. The techs were really nice about it.” Trying too hard. That’s what one of the techs said, unfortunately, while she was in earshot. Like the killer had watched too many cop shows. It was that thought—the possibility that Danielle was a prop in her own murder—as much as the smell of wet iron that brought her pizza back up. “So, yeah: blindsided.”
WRONG. Something about the word sketched from Danielle’s ashes, coupled with trying too hard, was stuck in her brain like a fish hook. It was wrong because someone tried too hard? Or someone tried too hard and it was … for a moment she felt like she was on the verge of putting it together.
Nope. Gone, like her knowledge of most of her passwords, because companies constantly made her change them.
“We recommend P3623ii6247DF29697mn17 for your new passcode.”
“See you in hell, Wells Fargo.”
“Do you know what I would like, Ava?”
She brought her brain back online to focus on the present. “I can honestly say I haven’t the vaguest clue,” she replied. “But I can’t wait to hear it.”
He smiled before he could stop himself. She was refreshing, no question. And she seemed genuinely interested in the things he said, even when they were gruesome things or blunt things. If she wasn’t a sociopathic murderer, he could be halfway in love with her by now, which was—he hated to overuse a word but this one was apt—absurd.
(“Yeah, but absurd doesn’t mean impossible, big bro.”)
He silently told the ghost of his sister to hush. “I would like to go to Danielle’s memorial tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah. Day two, I forgot.” She scrubbed her hands through her hair, then grimaced when she remembered she had greasy catfish fingers. “Well. Forgot on purpose. Going the first time was bad enough.”
“It’s unfortunate you have to go back to work. I had rather hoped we could get together. Ah. At the memorial. To attend the memorial,” he corrected himself, internally wincing.
“Well, it’s your lucky night, pal, because it turns out I’m here for a couple more days.”
“You are? But that’s excellent.”
She shrugged.
“Will you attend with me?”
“Sure, but why d’you want to go? Are you hoping to interview family members there? Because, not to tell you your job, doing that at a funeral is gonna piss people off. And there’s nothing worse than being thrown out of a funeral. I wish I didn’t know that from personal experience, by the way.”
He almost laughed. “Noted. But my intention is otherwise. Killers often attend their victim’s memorial. And if, in this case, the vandal isn’t the killer—”
“What, a run-of-the-mill vandal? Just passing by and figured he’d trash a funeral home?”
“—I would imagine he or she wouldn’t be able to stay away regardless. They’ll want visual confirmation that their actions upset the family. They’ll want to see how the cleanup went. They’ll be looking everywhere for something the crew missed.”
“Creepy and inconsiderate.”
“Indeed.”
“I mean, would they at least bring a side dish for the potluck after the service?”
; This time he did laugh. “Who can know the depths of the funeral-crashing killer’s mind?”
“Depraved bastard,” she agreed.
“Regardless, it happens an astonishing amount of the time. It strikes me as unfathomably risky, which is why it’s part of their pathology. They need the adrenaline surge. They love looking at the chaos they wreaked and the family members they’ve devastated. They want to see the mess they made, and then they want to walk away without cleaning it up.”
“This goes back to your theory, doesn’t it? That Danielle’s killer was at her memorial. You think they’d come back a second time?” Ava looked visibly distressed at the thought, and he fought down the urge to comfort her. “Well, why not? I’m going back a second time, which in itself is unfathomable to me.”
“There’s a chance, which is another reason why I wished to attend. But I fear my attendance as a medical examiner would be viewed by the family as inappropriate, in particular since this is not my case and I was a teenager when she died.”
“I’ll get you in.” Ava tried a smile, but it looked wrong on her face. “You’ll be my plus one.”
He snorted.
“Right? Awful. All of it. But we could make something up. We don’t have to tell them who you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, we could lie,” she suggested. “You don’t have to be the ME. You could be … um … someone passing themselves off as my coworker?”
“I can’t.”
“Oh. It’s against your, uh, coroner’s oath? That’s okay,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t want you to do something against your—”
“No, I mean I cannot lie. I’m awful at it. Watch.” He looked her straight in the face and announced, “Your hair looks foolish and unattractive.”
Her hand rose instinctively to her curls. “Huh. Is it the catfish grease? Or the texture?”
“Neither. See? I was unable to pull that off. I like your hair.”
What are you DOING? Making a bigger idiot of myself than usual, he thought glumly.
“Okay, so you’re a bad liar, and on an unrelated note, I need a shampoo. But come with me tonight; one way or the other, I’ll get you in.”
Truth, Lies, and Second Dates Page 9