“Hey there, Dustin,” I whispered. After adjusting the dimmer, I dumped my bag and tackle box on the floor and crept out. Several minutes later, I returned with a primed canvas and another larger tackle box. I spread a thin plastic sheet under the easel and kicked off my boots and socks.
I surprise myself sometimes. I’m not known for being shy or cautious, but I never imagined hanging out with a dead guy. Yet here I stood next to a coffin, bopping along to the music on my headphones while I brushed on Dustin’s underpainting in bold strokes.
“Looking good,” I sang to my painting.
My head beat along to the throbbing chords ringing from my earbuds. The purplish base color, mixed from alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue, would provide a cooler tone to Dustin’s skin and the shadowy background. I had snapped some photos of Dustin in case I needed to work at home, but using a live subject is always preferable. Or dead, in this case.
Taking a break for the first coat to dry, I covered my palette of mixed paints with a wet paper towel and grabbed a Coke from my bag. I took a deep swig, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and sighed. Painting made me happy. Getting paid for it made me downright ecstatic. A beer would perfect the moment, but I sucked on the Coke instead. Breaking into a funeral home to paint a dead body was bad enough. Somehow cracking into a six-pack pushed the crime into redneck realm.
Wandering over to the coffin, I took another swig and stared at Dustin. Something looked different. I scanned him again and spotted the incongruence. The pocket flap on the far side of his suit jacket was folded inside itself, a minor detail that would bug me. I should fix it. But no, thank you.
Though I wouldn’t actually have to touch Dustin. Just his pocket.
I twitched my nose. But every glance from the easel to Dustin would zone in on that stupid pocket flap. That’s a lot of glances.
A light flashed in my periphery and the hairs on my arms rose. I craned my neck toward the door, but saw nothing.
My head bobbed to the throbbing music while I fixated on the pocket flap. A light flashed again. This time I pivoted toward the darkened doorway and ducked.
Still nothing.
Perfectly reasonable to have jitters standing next to a dead man in a coffin in a dark funeral parlor. I also suspected my mind was playing tricks on me so I could procrastinate touching that pocket. The flash was a car light or something. Probably some reflection thingy I didn’t understand because I didn’t pay attention in physics.
Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the coffin. My hand hovered over the body. I reached into the coffin and tugged the edge of the flap. It caught on something.
I plunged my hand into the pocket feeling for the obstruction. The flap flipped up, and I pulled out a small gray bag. Tiny hard misshapen objects rolled between my fingers through the soft pouch.
“Eew!” I dropped the bag, shaking my hand free of the heebie-jeebies. What would feel like that?
I took another swig of Coke and grabbed hold of my nerves. Just as I lectured myself to stop messing around, a beam of light slid across the wall before me, then swung toward the ceiling.
That’s no car light. That’s a flashlight.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I began to turn. One crack to my skull and the headphones popped out of my ears. My knees buckled. The Coke foamed and splashed as my body dropped.
Intense, bright colors exploded in my vision.
Cad red.
Titanium white.
And finally, Mars black.
FIVE
“Wake up, Cherry.”
The loud voice crashed through throbbing pain. I ignored it, instead searching for the pillow of nothingness that slipped away a moment ago.
“Cherrilyn Tucker, come on now. Time to get up, honey.” The voice bounced inside my head like a pinball on steroids.
This had to be the worst hangover I’d ever felt. I snarled a reply to the visitor.
“Whoa. She’ll be fine boys. Hold off on the gurney.”
The throbbing beat a tattoo in my head. Gurney? I blinked one eye open and focused through the haze of pain. I lay facedown on a wrinkled plastic sheet. My hands were speckled purple, my face sticky wet. I groaned and felt a remnant of drool dribble off my lips. Wiping my chin on my shoulder, I considered the owner of the voice. A slice of panic cut through me, but I rolled over anyway. Uncle Will’s face loomed above mine. I began to push myself up on my elbows. He shoved me down.
“What in the hell is going on?” I struggled to sit up, but the sheriff kept a firm hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”
“You tell me.”
I glanced around the viewing room, careful of my aching head. My easel and paints were strewn over the floor. The coffin lay almost tipped on its side, Dustin’s body half dumped on the table. His jacket and pants looked dark in spots.
My breath pulled tight in my chest. “Is that blood?”
Will kneeled next to me on the plastic sheet, his hand draped on my shoulder. He glanced behind him and shook his head. “No. I think it’s Coke. There’s a bottle on the floor.”
I groaned again and gingerly felt the lump on the back of my head.
“Are you okay, Cherry? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. My head hurts. I think somebody hit me.” I shuddered. Dustin looked like a Halloween prop. “I don’t know how his coffin tipped. This place is a mess.” I turned from the dumped corpse to my overturned easel and paints. “All that paint I mixed! My canvas! There’s spilled paint on it. I’m going to have to stretch another one.”
“Cherrilyn, I’m going to ask you again. What are you doing at Cooper’s?” Will looked past me toward the door. I pushed up on my elbows to follow his gaze. Lights blazed in the lobby as two deputies chatted in the doorway.
This wasn’t good.
“Painting?” I squeaked.
“And how did you get in?” Will asked, faking patience.
“With a key,” I said, staring at the ceiling. The heat creeping into my face made me more woozy.
“A key given to you by...?”
“Am I going to need a lawyer?” I closed my eyes. The droning wail of a siren grew louder. “I don’t need an ambulance. I can’t afford an ambulance.”
“How do you know it’s for you?”
My eyes snapped open.
“It’s for you,” said Will. “First we’ll take you to the ER to get your head checked. Then you’ll get a little trip to the station.”
“Uncle Will,” I shot up despite the weight of his hand on my shoulder and nearly passed out. “The station? Seriously? That’s all the way in Line Creek. Think of your budget. Do you really want the taxpayers footing the bill to haul me to jail? I just came in to paint Dustin.”
“Let’s see,” Will tapped his chin. “I’m looking at destruction of property. Breaking and entering. Battery. Can’t tell if there’s been a robbery yet. Trespassing at the very least.”
“Oh God,” I said, burying my face in my hands.
“Praying is always good at times like these.” His thick fingers tentatively searched my hair for a lump. “That’s a nice goose egg right there. I should have put on gloves.” He wiped his fingers on the tarp, leaving a smear of purple.
“What’s this?” he said, pointing to something beneath my bent legs. “Just a minute, don’t move.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to drag the object from under the shadow of my body. The little gray bag slipped out.
“Ugh,” I shuddered. “There’s the whole reason for this mess.”
Will’s head jerked up, and he cornered me with a sharp gaze. “Explain.”
“I was trying to fix Dustin’s pocket, because that bag was inside, when someone walloped me.” I grabbed Will’s arm and started to babble. “I jus
t came in here to paint, honest, Uncle Will. I’m trying to get a jump on the project so Shawna doesn’t collect the commission money. She wants to color over a picture and call it a portrait. We’re not talking Andy Warhol silk screen stuff. It’s not even Photoshop tinting. If the Bransons choose her painting over mine, everyone will follow their lead. It’s going to ruin my business and ruin the craft. She can’t be allowed to call something like Paintograph art.”
Rolling his eyes, he scooped up the pouch in his hand. “I need an evidence bag,” he called to a deputy behind him.
“What about fingerprints?”
“If I could pull prints off a cloth bag,” he said, “whose prints do you think I’m going to find?”
“Damn.”
“Exactly. What’s in here anyway?” He rolled the bag in his hand. “Feels kind of nasty.” He pulled open the drawstring and sprinkled some of the contents into his hand. Small, yellow objects rolled within his palm. A shiver ran through me.
“You missing any teeth?” he said.
“I don’t see why we have to eat here,” I said, stirring my cheese grits. “I have bad memories from the Waffle House. And now I’m going to associate hash browns with getting sucker punched in the head.”
“Just eat your food and stop your whining,” said my brother, Cody. “You said you were starving, and where else could we go?” He pointed with his knife and resumed sawing his ribeye. “I mean, look at you. You look like you dunked yourself in a paint bucket.”
My clothes looked like a Jackson Pollock experiment. Globs of plasticized purple stuck in my fine hair. The paint matched the doorknob sized bump on the back of my head.
“I don’t think you look too bad,” said Todd. “If you kind of pushed your hair up into a Mohawk and ripped your t-shirt, we could drive up to Atlanta and find a punk club.”
“Why did you bring him?” I asked Cody.
“He was at Red’s when I got your call.” Cody pulled off his battered Braves cap and scratched his shaggy blonde hair. The brown eyes danced over the grinning stud-muffin sitting next to me. Cody’s mouth drew into a smirk. “I figured if you needed bail money, your husband could put it up. You know I’m broke.”
“I was not arrested and Todd is not my husband,” I shoveled a spoonful of grits into my mouth and glared across the table. “This was just a big misunderstanding.”
“A big misunderstanding that landed you in jail.”
“It was just questioning!”
“I believe you, baby,” said Todd. “If you were going to rob a dead guy you would have been much sneakier.”
“Thank you.” I studied him from the corner of my eye. The tall, blonde Adonis — worthy of a Botticelli fresco or at least a Calvin Klein underwear ad — stretched his arm across the back of our booth. Drumsticks poked out of the carpenter pocket of his cargo shorts. Somewhere beneath the table, slot-machine cherries tattooed one calf. “What’s with the new tattoo? I saw it when we walked in.”
“You like it?” He beamed. “I did it for you. Because your name is Cherry.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to permanently ink references to me on your body.”
“You’re my wife.” He corrected himself, “My first wife.”
“Stop saying that,” I stabbed a piece of sausage. “We weren’t hardly married. Filling out the annulment papers took longer than the wedding.”
“I actually don’t remember getting unmarried, only getting married.”
“That can be blamed on tequila. You also didn’t remember me after the wedding.” I gazed at the solid forearms and broad shoulders with regret. “I spent my so-called honeymoon searching the casinos for you.”
“That’s Vegas, baby. What can I say?” He shrugged. “We could try it again.”
“You’re delusional.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me in a long time.” Todd hooked a piece of sausage from my plate. “I think you’re growing sweet on me again.”
I sighed. Todd was like the dog you keep dropping off in the country to find him waiting at your house when you return home. One that was too cute to put out of his misery.
Cody snorted. “I think you make a great couple. I don’t care what people say about y’all.”
The bell above the door tinkled and our attention swung toward the entrance to check out the newcomer. Late night Waffle House always brought in an interesting crowd. We watched a lanky man with curly dark hair and fierce gray eyes push through the door. I hunkered over my plate, finding sudden fascination in my cooling grits and link sausage.
“I guess grave robbing worked you up an appetite,” said Luke, ambling up to our table.
I muttered a string of choice words not quite under my breath. “I wasn’t robbing Dustin. I was painting.”
“Sheriff said they found Dustin’s effects on your person.”
“That’s stretching it. They found that little bag under my person. I don’t think I’d go to all that trouble to steal baby teeth.”
“Baby teeth?” said Todd. “Who would want to steal baby teeth?”
“Who knows,” said Luke, “maybe some flaky artist wants to make some crazy art doo-dad with them.”
“I don’t do assemblage. I paint. And I’m not flaky.”
“Going to a funeral home to paint a dead body in the dark isn’t flaky?”
“Sounds flaky to me,” agreed Cody. He leaned back in the booth and adjusted his cap to study Luke. “Who are you? You make my sister cuss like that, gets me pretty curious.”
“You must be Cody. Mind if I sit?” Luke slid into the booth next to him. “I’m Luke Harper. You were a young ’un last time I met you. I’ve been gone a long time.”
“I’m Todd McIntosh.” Todd extended his hand across the table. “I’m Cherry’s husband. Sort of.”
“Really?” Luke’s eyebrows rose a notch. “I didn’t realize she was married.”
“I’m not. Todd’s mistaken.”
“How can you be mistaken about that?” asked Luke. I looked up from my bowl and caught Todd’s wide-eyed open face greet Luke’s shuttered countenance. They reminded me of Lassie meeting Cujo.
“You’d have to know Todd better,” Cody replied.
Todd nodded in acquiescence.
“He’s a great guy though,” Cody added, sidling a look toward Luke.
“I’m a drummer,” Todd said.
“A drummer,” Luke drawled.
“My band is called Sticks. You know, because I’m a drummer.”
“Good one.”
“Okay, enough with the get-to-know-you.” I tossed my fork on the table. The cold grits had congealed, and Todd had eaten all my sausage. “I’ve got to get home and stretch another canvas.”
“What are you doing here?” Cody turned toward Luke, ignoring me.
“Sheriff Thompson told me you were going to the Waffle House. My family got the call about the breaking and entering at the funeral home.” Luke stopped me with a look when I started to protest. “I went down to the Sheriff’s Office as a representative of the family to decide if we’d press charges. I didn’t get a look at Dustin, but it didn’t sound like much harm was done other than the coffin tipping. And the teeth weren’t successfully stolen.”
“I didn’t try to steal those teeth. Somebody else tried to rob Dustin. I’ve got a gigantic headache to prove it.”
“So tell me what happened,” said Luke.
I stumbled through my explanation of painting and seeing the flashlight.
“Where were you guys when this happened?” He looked at Cody.
“The County Line Tap. Heard on Red’s scanner there was a break-in at Cooper’s, then got the call Uncle Will hauled Cherry off in the paddy wagon.”
/> “I didn’t get hauled off in the paddy wagon.” I slammed my cup on the table, sprinkling my hand with lukewarm coffee. “You better not tell Grandpa that. Uncle Will drove me to the hospital in the Crown Vic.
“Who was at Red’s?” Luke said, ignoring me.
“The regulars,” Todd muttered and blushed.
“Wait a minute, it’s Wednesday night. The County Line isn’t open this late on a weekday.” I shook my finger. “You guys playing cards at Red’s? You’re going to get Red in a lot of trouble if his place gets busted.”
The blush flared. “Now, baby. I’m not really playing. We wouldn’t do that to Red. It was for fun. Pennies. Nothing big.”
“Are you talking about poker?” Luke asked.
Todd shrugged. “Yeah. I like to play.”
“He’s like the idiot savant of poker,” Cody added.
“Cody,” my voice hummed with warning. Todd wore the dumb blonde look well, but I sometimes wondered if the act was real or a game that amused him. He really did play poker like a pro. And I sort of found myself married to him for a minute.
“Thanks, Cody.” Todd beamed. “Yeah, I’m pretty good. I did so good in an online league that I won a contest to play in Vegas.” His hands slapped the table in a happy rhythm. “Cherry went with me.”
“Lucky you.” Luke said to me.
“Lucky Todd,” Cody snorted.
“Hush up, Cody. That reminds me. Grandpa told me Sam McGill’s got a traveling poker group that met in Mather’s tire shop. You know anything about that?” I winced at my insensitivity. “Sorry Luke. You probably don’t want to be reminded of Mather’s.”
“No, actually I’d like to know what happened. Go on, Todd.” Luke leaned back in the booth. “Is it high stakes?”
“McGill’s boys? Nothing higher than a twenty in that group. It’s for fun. And the guys are old.” Todd’s fingers tapped the underside of the table. “You looking for a high stakes game?”
“Can I find that around here?” Luke asked.
1 Portrait of a Dead Guy Page 6