by Misty Simon
I took the lead and had everyone follow me through the tunnel next to the massive three-story building to come in the side door of Graver’s Funeral Home. My shoes sank into the plush carpet as I waited for everyone to pass me and go into the yellow parlor. There were plenty of chairs in there and the sunny color might alleviate some of the anger and bad vibes coming off the two women I’d brought with me.
“Can I get either of you something?”
“A new life?” Gina asked, a tear leaking out of her eye.
“It’s going to be okay.” Max crouched in front of her, patting her knee.
Standing next to him, I put my hand on her shoulder and Mama Shirley put her hand on the other shoulder.
“We’ve got you, honey. Nothing’s going to touch my baby.” Mama patted her shoulder and rose from her chair. “We need to get the Bean There, Done That open. Business as usual so people don’t assume your guilt. Have you gotten clearance from the cops?”
Mama was all business, as if nothing had happened, but Gina still looked shaken. She’d come across a dead body. I knew how that felt after finding my former employer and then my ex-husband dead, separate times but the same feeling, sick to the stomach, jittery, shocked. Gina hadn’t even had time to process anything as she’d been taken right into custody, then assaulted on her way out of the holding cells at the police station. She might need a couple of minutes.
“Can Max help you do that while I let Gina have a little breather? He’s very good at making coffee.” I stole a glance at Max. He shook his head, but I steamrolled on. “He can get people started with coffee and whatnot while you get the baking going. I’m sure we could run to the store and grab some muffins if you need them to get started.”
Mama shook her head so hard her bleach-blond curls went flying around. “This is Gina’s store and in Gina’s store we don’t do store-bought. Gina always has some frozen in the big freezer downstairs. I’ll thaw them and others can wait if they want something more. Or I could make real breakfast this morning. Does that stove still work in the back, Gina?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Don’t start with me, young lady. People are going to be in there to get the gossip. I’ll give it to them in the form I want them to have it while flipping pancakes at the same time. More sturdy breakfast items mean more time spent at the table. People will wait for a seat or share tables with strangers if they have to.”
With that she walked out. When Max didn’t follow her, she came back into the room. “Come along, Max, you’re about to learn how to make pancakes the old-fashioned way.”
He gave me one helpless look, but I shrugged at him. I couldn’t do anything more than that. Gina had started shaking, and I was trying to keep her still until her mother left so that the other woman wouldn’t stay instead of doing something constructive.
Finally, he trailed along behind Mama Shirley, and I sat down in her vacated chair. “You can let go now.”
I scooted my chair closer as Gina broke into sobs, her shoulders shaking and her eyes streaming with a flood of tears.
“What can I do to help?”
“I was in jail. In jail! I never wanted to be in jail.”
“It’s over, sweetie. Now we move on.”
She shook her head. “I thought I could maybe love him, and then I hated him, but I never wanted him to die. I just wanted him to go away. How did he get in my stair well in the first place?” She lifted her gaze to my face. “You locked the door behind yourself when you and Max left, right?”
“I thought about that, and yes, I’m sure I locked it. Maybe Craig was good at picking locks. We don’t know much about him that’s true if you think about it.”
She fisted her hair in her hands. “I don’t want to think about it. God, what a mess.”
The front door opened and closed. Did Max forget something? Was Mama Shirley’s mother’s intuition buzzing, so she came back because she felt that Gina was in distress?
Nope, it was just my oldest brother, who was supposed to be on vacation. He slipped through the parlor door as if he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Turning toward the door, he closed it quietly.
“Jeremy?”
He jumped about a foot and banged his shoulder against the door he’d just closed.
“For God’s sake, Tallie. What are you doing down here?”
“Uh, I was about to ask you the same thing. I thought you were going away on vacation.”
Gina shot up from her chair, smoothing her hair and her shirt at the same time. Skirting around the chair, she held the back so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Gina.” Jeremy gave a small nod.
“Jeremy.”
I looked back and forth between them. They’d never exactly been friends, but these weren’t even greetings. Their names sounded more like first volleys in a war I wasn’t aware had been started.
“Tallie,” I said, trying to dissipate the tension until I could get Gina alone and ask what in the world was going on.
They both stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. Maybe I had because I felt like I was in some odd dimension where my brother and my best friend had engaged in something that made them pretend they were strangers. If what was running through my mind was true, I was going to have a very stern talk with both of them. Separately, of course.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Jeremy pointed out.
“You didn’t answer mine, either,” I shot back. “And don’t pull that oldest child crap and say I have to listen to you because you’re older. That point became obsolete years ago. Now, why are you here when you’re supposed to be on vacation?”
“I had a few loose ends to tie up. I was just doing that.” The table to his left apparently needed straightening because he turned and stacked brochures for our services here at Graver’s Funeral Home, then moved along to the wall and made sure all the many memorial plaques were hanging just so. When he moved to the various objects you could have your loved one’s ashes put into, I shared a look with Gina. Something in her eyes and the way she fidgeted with the seam at the top of her chair told me she was about to bolt. What the heck was going on?
“I’d better go,” Gina said, a little breathlessly in my opinion.
“You have nowhere else to go but up to my apartment. Your place is still under investigation.”
Jeremy suddenly did not find the urns and necklaces fashioned from ashes quite as fascinating.
“What happened?” He focused on Gina when he asked the question.
I waited a few moments to see if she’d answer, but she stared at the carpet as if she hadn’t heard.
“Um, there was a death at the Bean. I guess you didn’t hear?”
His hand stretched out toward Gina, but he dropped it without making contact. Straightening his tie, he cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes at me when I opened my mouth. I closed it again.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Gina. If there’s anything we at Graver’s can do, please don’t hesitate to let us know.” He looked at his watch as if it held all the answers to all the mysteries of the world. “I should go. Good luck.”
And he was out the door, much more quickly and much louder than when he had entered.
“Good luck? Really?” Gina blew out a breath and shook her head. “Good luck. I think that about sums up my whole last twenty-four hours.”
Max came in where Jeremy had just left. “What was he doing here?” he said, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder. “I thought he said he was going on vacation.”
Gina turned away as I shrugged. “He said he had things to wrap up but not what they were.”
“Well, I tried to flag him down, and it was like he was lost in another world.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I do know that he’s acting weird, though, and I also know I don’t have time to worry about why.” I sat down on a sofa in the casual conversation area of the parlor and dragged Gina down with me.
“I should go,” she
said, resisting my hand on her arm.
“And I’ll say it again—where are you going to go? To your mom’s? She’s having her own issues and you don’t want to be there right now. Plus, she’s running the Bean. You can’t go to your house, and the Bean is doing fine, isn’t it, Max?”
His nod was decisive and quick, thank goodness. “The Bean is fine. I was just coming over to let you know that your mom is whipping up pancakes, scones, and cinnamon rolls like they’re going out of style, but people are grabbing them up. The line is seriously out the door. We were able to get a hold of Laura, but she’s running late.”
Gina’s head snapped up, the light coming back into her eyes. “I really should go. I have to help, Tallie. I can’t leave people in line.” She made to get up again. I held on tighter.
“They’ll be fine. And a line means people talking, and people talking could bring out info that we need if we’re going to make sure the right person gets caught. If it was murder.”
Gina gasped and Max groaned.
“You said you weren’t going to get involved in this one. I heard you tell Burton,” Gina said, accusation tightening her voice.
“I lied.” And that was the last word on that. “Now, let’s go over the facts while Max returns to dish duty, and then we’ll see what we know, and what we still need to know.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Doubt marred my boyfriend’s brow.
I didn’t have time for doubt. I was going to save my best friend if it was the last thing I did. “I do, and that’s the end of that. The police didn’t exactly come off all shiny and experienced when Darla and Waldo were killed. I’m not going to let them pin anything on Gina if I can help it. I know she didn’t do this, and the rest of the town will know it, too, once I’m done.” I hugged him for good measure. “Now scoot.”
After shooing Max away with another quick kiss and a promise that we’d see each other later, I pulled Gina into the little kitchen in the back of the funeral home. No use sitting out in the parlor if it would draw more people in. I needed information, not visitors.
I made myself a cup of tea and then made a cup of coffee for Gina out of the single-serving machine. No, it wasn’t her usual, but the way her face was wan and drawn, it was just going to have to do. I couldn’t take the time to run across the street to get her a real cup of the good stuff.
“Are you okay?” I asked, mixing creamer in with my tea until it was blond.
Her shoulders drooped. “I don’t know, to be honest. I feel like I’m all over the place inside. I’m sad but I’m also angry and shocked and distraught and pissed and so many other things.” She turned weary eyes on me. “And I’m so thankful that I have you.”
“Now, don’t start crying.” I grabbed tissues just in case because it looked like my warning was not going to be heeded.
“I can’t help it.” As she took the tissues out of my hand, she sniffled. “I mean, one minute I think I might finally have found someone nice to spend some time with and the next I find out that he’s married, then not even twelve hours later he’s dead at the bottom of my stairs. I feel like someone put me on a roller coaster and won’t stop the ride even though I’m going to barf.”
“Please don’t barf.” I nudged the trash can toward her with my foot. Just in case, anyway. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. And while I wanted to see you happy, I just kept feeling like something was off with Craig, anyway. He seemed too perfect. Even Max isn’t that good.”
That got a watery chuckle out of her, which was better than the full-out crying I could see verging in her eyes.
She sniffed again and dabbed the tissue at her nose. “I know. I just really wanted it to work, and not only did it not work, but then I have to go stumbling over him in my own hallway. There was no chance he was sleeping, either. His eyes were wide open and staring at me, but his head was at a weird angle like one of those creatures in the horror movies you liked to watch when we were younger.”
“Creepy.” But since she seemed willing to talk about it, I got a pack of stickies from the drawer next to the silverware and started jotting things down.
“Are we really going to do this?” She eyed my makeshift notepad.
“Yes, we are, because if we don’t, I can’t guarantee that Burton or anyone else will. I know he tries, but without my help last time I’d still be running from some deranged killer and none the wiser about all that money Waldo had stashed away.” All the money that had gone to taxes and cleaning up debt Waldo had left floating when he’d died in his own house. I’d done what I could to pay people off and leave at least a little for my own nest egg, since the debts to some of the bigger corporations weren’t mine. But the little people that he’d screwed out of their life savings? I’d made that right as best I could. It had left me precious little to save for my own dreams, but at least I’d been able to do something right, after my disaster of a marriage.
“I don’t think Burton really believes I did it.”
“That’s something, but it’s no guarantee. Remember, you told everyone in the Bean yesterday that if you saw him again you’d kill him, poison him, or boil him in coffee, which amounts to the same thing. I’m sure that’s going to get back to Burton’s ears, and he’s going to have some more questions for you.”
“Oh my God. I totally forgot about that.” Her fingers drummed on the dining room table my mother had bought at a yard sale years ago and had refinished. “Should I go talk to him about that now before he hears it from someone else?”
I found no inspiration in the lacquered cupboards lining the wall. I really wished I could. Of course I wanted to clear Gina’s name, but I had also been looking forward to Max’s vacation and spending time with the man I hoped would be more than my boyfriend. Maybe. Someday. “No, I think we need to make our own list and then go in with a plan. I’m sure with Mrs. Johnson already having been there that she did not skimp on telling him exactly what she heard and how much she hates you.” I tapped my pen on the small stack of square paper. “Why does she hate you? I mean, obviously, she might have thought you were trying to steal her man, but it seemed to go deeper than that. Ideas?”
“I’ve been wracking my brain, but I can’t come up with anything. I vaguely remember her from high school, but we never really had anything to do with each other. And as far as the coffee shop, I did ask her to leave, but I would think that shouldn’t have made her hate me like this. I just didn’t want to fend off her offers to buy my shop every day. Maybe she’s pointing all her hatred on the one she knows he was cheating with? She didn’t seem surprised to find him in there, and the tone of her voice was soothing to him but accusatory to me. Do you think he’d been cheating for years, and she always just turned a blind eye?”
Why was it always with the cheating? Why couldn’t people stick to their vows? If I ever married again, and that might be a big “if,” it was going to be to someone who actually liked me, not just loved me or said they did.
I scribbled some doodles on my top stickie. “It’s possible that she finally has a face to go at with the hate, but it still feels like there’s something more.” I contemplated that for a moment and still came up with nothing new. “What do you really know about Craig? Not that stuff from his dating profile. The real life stuff.” It was a valid question, but my stomach got queasy when Gina’s mouth fell into a frown and her bottom lip quivered.
Shrugging, she wrapped her arms around herself. “Nothing, I guess. I know he owns that home upgrade company. He took me by the office once, but other than that, I suppose everything else was a lie.” The chair scooted back as she jumped up. “Using the bathroom, be right back.”
She wasn’t successful at holding back her sobs before she slammed the door behind her. I left her alone this time because maybe she needed this release before she could move on. They hadn’t been together long, but Gina had told me they’d talked for weeks before they’d met for the first time face to face. The anger was soon going to come
roaring out full force, if I knew my friend. And I did.
I was ready for it. It was what would ultimately prod her to want to find out who did this. Whoever it was hadn’t just killed Craig, they’d also dragged Gina into it by trying to place the blame on her and killing him in her house. When she thought of that she was going to be pissed. Being pissed would make her want to get justice, and for that I was her girl.
In the meantime, I was about to dig into the life and times of Craig Johnson and find out exactly what he’d had going on in the real life he hadn’t shared with Gina.
I was right in the middle of checking out the tenth site where Craig listed a profile when Gina emerged from the bathroom. Her nose was red, along with her eyes, but her shoulders were set and her mouth was a straight, flat line. There was my fighter. She would want to work. Believe me, I had plenty for her to do.
“Better?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t want to be petted or coddled.
“Yep, thanks.” She came up behind me, and I made no move to shut the lid on my laptop. She wouldn’t have been happy with me if I’d tried to shield her.
“How many?” she asked.
“Too many.” When she took the seat next to me, I turned the laptop toward her and moved the mouse. “You weren’t the first, and you might not be the only one at this particular time.”
The growl beside me sounded like a feral cat, but I let it pass.
“He was a jerk. A real ass, but I still didn’t want him dead.”
“I know that, and you know that, but his wife is gunning for you, people overheard you saying you’d boil him in coffee, and the police might not have any other viable suspects. We need to give them some.” After handing the laptop over to her, I took out a notepad and a pen. A real notepad this time—the time for stickies was over.
“Tell me everything you know.” I held my pen at the ready like a reporter waiting for the juiciest story ever. Or even better, like a detective getting the intel to then pursue the suspect. I was really getting into this sleuthing thing. I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, but now it was necessary, so the reasons didn’t matter, only results.