by Misty Simon
I handed her a box of tissues while also holding her hand in mine. “Sweetie,” I started, then realized I didn’t know her name. “I’m sorry, what should I call you? I feel like if we’re going to have this discussion I should know your name.”
“It’s Brenna. Brenna Johnson. I had it legally changed last week. Craig and I weren’t married yet, but when I found out about the baby, I wanted to be sure that he or she would legally have his or her dad’s name. At least until his divorce went through and we were free to be together.”
Wow, okay. So she did know that he was still married, but wasn’t aware that Craig was still very much tethered to his wife before he died. How hard was this going to go down? Maybe I should have added another spoonful of sugar to that cup in her hands. “So, Brenna. Here’s the thing. I don’t know how else to tell you this, and I don’t want to upset you in your delicate condition, but I don’t think there’s any other way to do this.”
She looked at me with glistening eyes, making me unsure how to even start. I plunged in because nothing was going to make this better. Craig was a jerk through and through and no sugar coating was going to change his sour into sweet.
“Brenna, Craig was very much married. He was still with his wife the day he died. He left the coffee shop with her as soon as she came to get him. I can assure you she is taking her role as widow very seriously.”
“Widow.” She snorted, setting her cup down with a solid thunk. “They were separated and had been for years. She couldn’t bear him children, and he didn’t want her anymore. But when he tried to leave her the last time, she threatened to kill herself. He was making sure she was stable and then we were going to be together. If I really am pregnant, I know he would have left her for good, no matter what.”
“Wait—are you not sure if you actually are pregnant?” What kind of farce had come storming into my town? We had our problems, but this seemed almost as bizarre as the stories Mama Shirley loved enough to tape.
“I can feel the baby inside me. I know it! I would only be two weeks pregnant, so it’s too early to take the test, but I know it in my heart. I was so excited to tell him, and now he’s gone.”
I itched for my pad and paper just to write down this latest lie. Did he keep a note card of all the ones he’d told so that he could keep them straight and not blow his own cover? I wondered if that might be what Michelle had that she felt would damn Gina to jail. I almost wished that we’d found some kind of secret room like I’d found in Darla’s house all those months ago. It would make this so much easier, plus it would give me a list of other women I should seek out. But I had none of that, and my long silence had brought tears to Brenna’s eyes again.
I quickly patted her hand. “I wish there was a way to make this easier for you, but the wife was most definitely the wife, and you aren’t the only one he made promises to. He was on his way to deliver flowers to another woman when he died. And the wife is the one who scheduled and paid for the memorial. She loved him.”
I wasn’t entirely sure of that, of course, since she’d seemed pretty much over her husband even though he’d only died three days ago. But now was not the time to get into that.
“I . . . I . . . I . . .” She gasped, and I grabbed her a glass of water.
“Head between your knees.”
“No.” Gulping, she sat back, then took a swig of water. “No, that’s okay. It doesn’t come as a complete surprise. I thought he might be too good to be true, but I never thought he’d do this to me.”
Gina had said something similar. How many women now thought that? “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” After sitting up straighter, she smoothed her shirt down, ran a hand over the shoulder-length hair she’d slightly mussed with her crying jag, and then stood. “I think I’ll skip the funeral. I find myself not as grief stricken as I had originally thought.”
A quick changeover for sure, but having been in the funeral business for years, I knew that things could change in the blink of an eye. I’d once had a guy come in to plan his wife’s funeral only to find out that she’d spent all their money on bingo and not the burial services she’d told him she was paying for all those years. After one beat of silence, he went from wanting the most extravagant send-off to telling us to burn her and put her in a cardboard box. Later he’d changed his mind, but it took time.
This might take time, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brenna came back at some point and wanted to at least sit in the room where she would have said good-bye to Craig if she hadn’t been so angry.
“Why don’t you finish your tea first?” I said gently. “We still have people coming in, and it might be better if we wait until everyone’s seated so there’s no chance of you running into anyone you don’t want to see.”
“Can I have another cookie?” Her voice was soft and those brown eyes pleaded as she sat back down at the table.
I couldn’t turn down her hopeful face, not with the full understanding of how addicting my mother’s cookies were. “Of course.”
I handed her a snickerdoodle, congratulating myself on a crisis averted, when my dad stepped into the kitchen doorway and frantically motioned me to come out.
Turning to the woman, who was munching around the edges of cinnamon and sugar goodness, I said, “I’ll be back as soon as everyone is seated, Brenna. Don’t leave without an escort, okay?”
“Sure thing. A few more cookies might help me have something to do.”
I smiled at her as I put the jar on the table. Mom could always make more.
* * *
“Phew,” I said to my dad as soon as I closed the kitchen door behind me.
“Come with me.”
Bud Graver didn’t sound happy, and that could mean one of two things. Either he wasn’t happy with me, or not happy with the situation. Then again, it could also mean he was in business mode, and I was just taking it as him being not happy. Really anything was possible.
I totally should have gone with my first instinct.
As we entered the aforementioned office filled with places to put your dead in or under, he gestured to the guest chair while he remained standing and then began to pace.
Stopping in front of me, he crossed his arms. “You can’t walk away from your post like that. More importantly, I can’t be running after you when I need to care for our patrons.”
He paced back and forth once more, then stopped in front of me with his hands clasped behind his back and his belly sticking out. I remained seated because getting up would be seen as some kind of rebellion, and I was not in the mood to go through those motions right now.
Schooling my features into the best neutral I could, I drew a slow breath in through my nose, then let it out. He was concerned for his business—I got that—but this was one of the reasons I would never work here full time. He didn’t trust that I knew what I was doing.
After another breath, I felt I could talk without yelling. “I was containing a situation,” I explained, hanging onto my patience with my fingernails. “Perhaps you didn’t see the woman wailing by the big picture of the deceased—the woman who most definitely was not the deceased’s wife—crying about the deceased never getting to meet their unborn child.”
He opened his mouth, then he snapped it shut with a clink. Knowing the way his mind worked, I figured he was trying to come up with a way to save face for his assumptions and chastising me when he had no idea what I had done or why.
I continued before he came up with a way to weasel around his error. “I took her to the kitchen because I didn’t want anyone walking in on us by accident—plus it has the bonus of having an exterior door that I was going to walk her out of as soon as all the bereaved showed up, so that I could keep her out of a mess that I was sure you did not want in the funeral home. She’s fine in there, eating Mom’s cookies. You wouldn’t have had to run after me if you would trust me every once in a while.”
So much for the kudos for making the programs and gettin
g everything taken care of this morning by the crack of dawn. Working here at all looked less appealing with every word out of his mouth, every scowl. I was about at the end of my rope and didn’t want more strife. No thank you very much.
“I . . .” He cleared his throat, tugged on his tie, then opened his suit jacket and put his hands on his hips, flaring the jacket out to his sides.
“I think the word you might be looking for is ‘sorry.’” I did get up this time and skirted around him. “I accept your apology.” At the door, I turned back to find him looking after me with squinted eyes. “I’ll walk our guest out just as soon as the talking gets started and hope that we can keep this all under wraps.”
There might have been some sputtering behind me, but I was not ruining my exit by going back to see if he was okay. He could take care of himself.
I found Max at the entrance to the kitchen with his hand on the doorknob.
“I was just looking for you,” he said. “We’re out of tissues.”
And here I had thought the crowd was dry-eyed. I guess I had been wrong there at least.
“They’re in the closet around the corner. Take as many as you think we might need. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Is the wailing woman still in there?” He kept his hand on the knob.
“Shh, and we’ll talk about it later. Craig had his fingers or other parts of him in far more pies than we thought. Let me take care of this, and then finish the service. Once it’s over, we’ll get some dinner and talk.” I’d missed breakfast with getting everything ready, and I was famished. I hoped Brenna had left me at least one cookie to still the gnawing hunger in my belly.
But when I opened the door, she wasn’t there anymore. I really hoped she had followed my advice and slipped quietly out the back so as not to be seen by anyone else. If not, then at least I’d tried.
* * *
The ceremony itself was quiet, though many were crying and not being discreet about it. And far more people had attended on such short notice than I had thought possible. Hopefully my mom had made enough of her famous punch.
The majority of the attendees were women, which wasn’t unusual, but the number of unattached women was. I didn’t recognize anyone, though several looked vaguely familiar. Once I thought I might have seen Laura from the Bean, but when the woman turned around it was someone else entirely. I would have to look over the surveillance footage my dad recorded during these things to see if I could match it with any of the people Craig had on his list of likes on those dating sites.
It was going to be a long day.
There would be no moving everyone to the gravesite, or a party afterward to celebrate his life. Michelle had nixed both of those ideas and wanted everything to happen here. The other parlor had been set up with the cookies, small finger sandwiches, and the famous fruit punch to be served after this ceremony—if you really wanted to call it that.
In my black skirt and pale-peach shirt, I stood at the back of the room, watching for anything that seemed out of the norm. At first, I didn’t find it curious that Michelle and Drake sat together. Craig’s wife and his business partner had the most to lose between them with his death.
The more I watched, though, the more I got a vibe that made me look closer. Drake had his arm around her and touched her as often as he could. For a grieving widow that might have been a comfort, but it appeared Michelle was trying to get away from him yet smiling the whole time. She smiled through the eulogy one of Craig’s old college buddies gave and through another given by Noreen, the secretary.
My ears perked up and my attention did not stray from Noreen when she said, “Craig was like a best friend, an older brother, and yet the man I trusted most with my heart and my love. He made me who I am today, and I wish he was here one last time so I could hug him and tell him how much he meant to me as I never did while he was alive.”
Now, that could be taken as a secretary who adored her boss. But it felt different, the delivery more like a love lost than a good boss. I must not have been the only one who thought that, since Drake shot out of his chair, almost tipping Michelle over, and pretty much ran Noreen out the side door.
I hustled after them like I was going to intercept the two before they went wandering around. Of course, if I happened to stand behind a pillar and listen to their conversation for a minute or two before announcing myself, I could just chalk that up to trying to give them the illusion of privacy.
“What did I tell you?” he said as they ground to a halt in front of the closed parlor doors directly across from where they had just exited.
“I had to do it, Drake. His body might not be here, but I had to say good-bye.”
He blew out a disgusted breath. “You’re being ridiculous. He never wanted you, and now you’ve just made a fool of yourself in front of a whole room of his family, friends, and our clients. Don’t be surprised if Michelle ends up wanting your head on a platter and demanding you be fired.”
Noreen gasped and then began sobbing. I couldn’t see the body language, so I had no idea if he was comforting her, but I had a feeling the answer to that was no.
“Pull yourself together. I think it would be best if you left now instead of later. You don’t need finger sandwiches, and maybe I can smooth Michelle’s feathers before she comes after you.” He paused and sighed. “I’m hoping that things will now go the way they were supposed to before that asshat Craig showed up in all our lives.”
She sniffled. “He wasn’t a bad man, just unhappy, and he didn’t know how to get away from that she-bitch.” The vehemence in her voice was enough to set me back a step.
“Don’t you ever call her that again. She is wonderful and has been dealt a bad hand here. You will not treat your new boss, and the woman who means a lot to me, like that.”
Holy crap. So the office had been a love square? Noreen wanted Craig and Drake wanted Michelle and no one got what they wanted except Craig, who apparently could do no harm in Noreen’s eyes and could do no right in Drake’s eyes.
I made mental notes of everything being said since I wouldn’t be able to make actual notes for quite some time. I should have brought my little spiral notepad with me. Or even better, I should have used my checklist with the clipboard. But that was tucked into a filing cabinet, so there was no way I could get to it. I also didn’t want to miss the rest of the conversation.
Although now that I tuned back in, it seemed no one was saying anything.
I peeked around the round pillar and came nose to red-patterned tie with Drake. Slapping a smile on my face, I tried to look like I was still in motion from having just come out the door, instead of standing there the whole time as an eavesdropper.
“Do you think you heard enough?” His brows showed deep grooves over his narrowed eyes.
“I just came out of the room. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and you weren’t snooping when you came around to my office trying to get me to build something in a house that’s not even yours. I highly doubt Daddy would let you have the attic remodeled.”
“Of course he would.”
“Should I talk to him about it now, then?”
I backed down, not wanting to have him ask my dad about that when he was already trying to circle his way out of wrongly accusing me of doing something un-employee-like here at Graver’s. “No, that’s fine. I’ve decided to go with a less . . . angsty firm, but thanks anyway.” I eyed him up and down even though I was shaking just a little bit in my low-heeled black pumps. “If you’ll come back in to the room, please? We don’t want people getting lost in here and there are certain places that are off limits.” I motioned back toward the parlor where Craig was having his final good-byes.
“I have my eye on you, Tallie. Don’t doubt it for a minute. And if you try to pin anything on anyone in my circle, I’ll show you all about being lost.”
What kind of threat was that?
I didn’t have a lot of time to worry about
it though, because my dad came out just as Drake was walking back in. Well, at least he couldn’t yell at me for actually looking like I was doing something. Even if it wasn’t exactly what he thought I was doing.
I smiled at my dad as we walked by, but he just frowned at me. Okay, so I might get yelled at anyway. It was worth the new lines in my journal and a better understanding of the players on this stage—a whole lot more players than I had originally thought.
Jeremy was up at the podium making final remarks and directing people across the hall. That was my cue to open the previously locked doors to the second parlor and have one last glance around to make sure all was ready.
Using the key in my pocket, I turned it in the lock and threw open both doors at the same time.
I had to jerk around with my hand over my mouth to keep the puke back. There was Brenna, laid out on the powder-blue rug, with her knees to the side. Her eyes were wide open, but she stared at something I could not see—and she couldn’t either, since she was most definitely dead.
Chapter Seven
I stood there for a second, holding a scream back along with the puke. I heard people moving around in the other room, chairs creaking and footsteps.
I had to do something now.
Backing out as quickly as I could, I pulled the doors closed with a snap. I then locked them. My dad came out of the parlor. He was always the first one so that he could shake hands and offer condolences. I frantically motioned him over to me, hissing his name.
His frown spoke volumes, but I was not going to be deterred. “Keep them all where they are. Don’t let anyone come out.”
“Tallulah!”
“Trust me, Dad, please. Just trust me and keep them in there.”
An exasperated sigh was all he gave me. But he did turn back around and made an announcement that the refreshments were going to be a few more minutes, and if everyone could just stay where they were for the moment everything should be ready as soon as possible.