Dan of the Dead

by Wendy Meadows

  The three friends all looked at Cassy, each unsure exactly what she was getting at.

  “It’s hardly been a priority of mine you know, Cass,” said Maybe. “I couldn’t care less.”

  Cat pulled away from Elliot and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands like a sleepy child.

  “Yeah, what are you getting at, Cassandra?”

  “It was you Cat who got me first thinking about it. I have to admit that you’d lost it a bit earlier, you know when you sang that song.”

  “To be honest I had lost it—I still have. I mean, Dan’s dead, right?”

  “Did any of us really keep in touch with him?”

  They all looked away, murmuring noncommittally.

  “It’s okay,” said Cassy, “We weren’t beholden to him. He was an old friend but we all move on.” Cassy was getting antsy. It was hard for her to be so close to the truth and yet she had to walk herself through her thoughts before she could come to a conclusion. It was as if the act of speaking them aloud made them solid and true. Until then, she was as in the dark as the rest of them. All except the killer, of course.

  “Why so cryptic? Do you think one of us is responsible?” Elliot’s tone was weary, but Cassy noted a hint of his own accusation.

  “It makes sense,” said Cassy, “Because none of the other people who attended the funeral is related to the Wellingtons in any way.” Before anyone could get a question in, Cassy plowed on. “When we first got here, I saw the priest arrive in a van. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Why would I? But of course, shouldn’t he have already been here? Well he would have been had this actually been a church.

  “Kinda looks like a church to me, doll,” said Maybe.

  “Kinda, but not quite. Sure it used to be a long time ago. This is where we buried my mother. But Oak Hill hasn’t been a place of worship for some time. Which explains the lack of religious iconography. It also explains why it wasn’t on the police’s cruiser’s GPS. No map shows this place up as a church and they were specifically looking for one.”

  “So if not a church, then what?” asked Cat. She seemed distressed. “And what do you mean no one here was family?”

  “It was never about them,” continued Cassy. “This whole thing has been staged to bring us together. The old Havenholm gang. One of us wanted a reunion so we were summoned to the Oak Hill Entertainment Space.” Cassy revealed the invoice, which she’d printed out and taken from the laptop in the back office. The letterhead matched what she’d said; Oak Hill Entertainment Space.

  “I don’t get it,” said Elliot as he rubbed his temples. “You’re telling me that this whole funeral was a lie?”

  Cassy paced along the front row, lost in her own thoughts now. “Uncle Monty was a big give away, even before I had it confirmed by Dot. He was trying on a character, but the details weren’t right. He clearly wasn’t a cigar smoker. Then there was the woman that Cat recognized—another actress.”

  “I was right. She really is! Isn’t she, Cassy?”

  “You got it, Cat. Well spotted. The priest too, though I think he understood what was going on long before anyone else did. Imagine if you’re an actor who has been paid to show up at a funeral and in comes Dan giving the performance of a lifetime. When he dies, you’re not going to think that it’s real. In my mind that explains why no one seemed too concerned about it, save for the five of us.”

  “This is starting to make sense, Cassy,” said Maybe. “The priest wasn’t up to the part. He seemed off somehow, but you don’t question it at the time. Why would you? I bet he was more informed about what was going to happen so that when Dan showed up dead, it was genuinely shocking to him.”

  “He did volunteer to call the police,” added Elliot. “That wasn’t acting—he was genuine.”

  Cassy clicked her fingers to underline the point. “Which is why he had to be stopped.”

  “Who would they go to such lengths though? All this is just far too elaborate,” said Cassy. “Someone was desperate to make sure we were all here and would have done anything to make it happen.”

  As if taken by a moment of inspiration, Maybe broke away, her fingers tangled through her hair. “Stuart didn’t commit suicide, did he?” she said, “He was the first victim. The one that would bring us all together.”

  Had it been true, making Stuart’s death the thing to bring them together was inspired, but it wasn’t exactly like that.

  “But why?” said Cat mournfully. “What did we do that could have possibly called for this?”

  Cassy was now certain that she was right. All the pieces were fitting together. Everything from the Wellington’s parents not being there, to the sham funeral and the church that wasn’t a church.

  “Do you remember what Dan said when he first came in?” she said.

  “It was just nonsense as far as I could tell,” said Elliot.

  “Yes, most of it was, but think back. Dan told us what had happened right from the start.” Cassy turned away from her old school friends and walked up the aisle, retracing Dan’s steps. “He came up this way and made it to the coffin.” Cassy leaned over the casket and placed her hands on the lid, palms down. “This is what he said: He’s gone. He’s gone. But this wasn’t some lamentation about the loss of his friend, he meant it literally. There was no body in here.”

  By now, the cat had no doubt been let out of the bag. Once they realized that they were no longer part of a carefully staged set up, all of the actors, all thirty or so of them, would have to come clean to Noyce and his men. Already Cassy could hear the sheriff’s booming voice hastily barking orders.

  “If that’s true, then open the casket, Cassy,” prompted Maybe. “Easiest thing to check.”

  Instead of opening the pine box as requested, Cassy put all her weight behind it and toppled it to the floor. It burst open, the lid springing off and the man inside sprawling across the floor. He rolled three times in a tangle of limbs and roses as a wreath fell on him. Maybe and Cat both gasped in horror, but Elliot began to applaud. That was, until he saw the body get up to its feet.

  “Stuart!” cried Cat in a rage. Impulsively she ran towards Stuart, who still had blood, Helena’s blood, on his clothes. Mercifully, Maybe intercepted her as Stuart still had the knife on him.

  “You have to admit that was a great place to hide,” he said, sneering at them.

  “Why did you do it, Stuart?” Cassy asked calmly. It was the one thing she hadn’t been able to figure out.

  “As if you didn’t know,” he said. There was no doubt that Stuart was still a credible threat to them. The best thing was to keep him talking. Before long, one of the deputies would come back in and the game would be up.

  “You owe us an explanation, Stuart. My sister has been rushed to hospital because of you. Two men are dead—you can’t possibly justify this.”

  Stuart reeled around madly, the blade clutched tight in his hand. “I owe you nothing. It’s you that owes me everything, all of you. You are all responsible for this. What happened to Dan, what’s going to happen to you, is exactly what you did to me.”

  “As far as I can tell, you’re alive and well, Stu,” said Elliot. “Something you denied to Dan. Can I remind you he was our friend?”

  “He was no friend of mine. None of you were truly friends of mine. All you wanted was my money; my family’s money. Can you really say that you dated me for anything else, Maybe? Same goes for your sister, Cassandra. And you too, Cat.”

  All eyes went to Catherine. If they’d been dating, it was news to everyone else.

  “I loved you, Stuart,” she said meekly. “I truly did, but you walked away from me.”

  Gently at first, then rising to a great booming noise, Stuart began to laugh. “I walked away from you? Oh, that’s just perfect.” His face fixed into a kind of grimace, lip curled, eyes narrowed. “I’m not the one who walked away. That was all of you. The night we went up to the Holloway’s and we found that body, do you remember? Of course you do.
That’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. But none of you know what happened after because I was the only one to go to the house. The rest of you were cowards.”

  With her hands outstretched in a sign of peace, Cassy stepped forward. “What happened Stuart? Tell us.”

  “Does it really matter? Do you even care after all this time? You certainly didn’t back then.”

  “I want to understand, Stuart. I really do.”

  “What happened up at the main house isn’t important. What matters is that on that day, I lost everything.” At this, Stuart deflated, overcome by some deeply ingrained sadness. For a moment, Cassy felt sorry for him, until she remembered what he had done.

  “So that’s it, isn’t it? It was all about the money,” said Cassy. “Did they write you out of the will? Is that it?”

  Stuart had gone rigid. He looked Cassy in the eye with barely concealed anger. “The Holloways were business associates of my father. There was a lot of money riding on their deals. That night we went up there, David Holloway had come home early from vacation so he could continue his affair with the stable girl, but she threatened to blackmail him. You know how women are, always after a bit of cash.”

  Cassy didn’t respond, instead she slowly advanced toward him, keeping one eye on his knife.

  “It’s easy for someone like him—rich, powerful—to make something like murder go away, only I was there to stop him. It was my testimony that put him away. And in so doing I nearly ruined my own family. They had so much riding on that deal that when it collapsed, they had to sell everything. Sure they made their money back, there was no way my father was going to be poor. But by then, they had already decided that I was a liability. I’d cost them too much. So I got nothing. Do you know how it feels to have everything, to have your future set for life, only to have it torn away from you? It hurts. It hurts really bad.”

  “But what has that got to do with us?” said Maybe defiantly.

  “If you hadn’t all abandoned me none of that would have happened. I snuck up on him by accident. He was in his work shed getting tools. If you’d had my back, there’s no way I would have seen what I did. There’s no way I could have been a witness. But even if I had, even if nothing had changed, I would have had you by my side.”

  The anger had been flushed from Stuart’s voice to be replaced with a mournfulness. He staggered back and let the knife drop from his hand.

  “We never really saw much of each other after that,” he said quietly. “That was the end of summer, but of childhood as well. I lost everything that night.”

  “And what about Dan? What about that poor guy you hired to be the phony priest? I think you’ll find that they’re the ones who lost everything,” said Maybe. She darted forward unexpectedly and grabbed the knife from the ground. Without breaking her stride, she raised the blade to Stuart’s neck.

  “Freeze or I’ll shoot.” The command rang off the walls of the one-time church. Deputy Jones approached them with his gun held out before him. “Put the knife down.”

  The knife clattered to the floor and Maybe stood back.

  “Now what in the hell is going on here?” asked the deputy, lowering his weapon as he looked at the scene; four friends all advancing through the remains of a coffin that had, until recently, been the hiding place for the fifth. “Somebody’s going to have to explain all this to me as soon as possible.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Helena winced in pain as she shifted positions on Cassy’s couch. She was surrounded by the cushions and pillows, which her little sister had provided. But it still wasn’t enough to keep her comfortable. She tried every possible position; legs up against the wall, curled up in a ball, lying perfectly straight, legs crossed, face down; pillows piled under her back, pillows piled on top—nothing seemed to work.

  In the end, there had been only one thing to do and that was send Cassandra out for a large tub of ice cream, a well-known cure for many ailments, including being stabbed by an old boyfriend.

  As she lay waiting for her little sister to return, Helena contemplated her fate. She’d only wanted to return to Havenholm for the shortest amount of time possible, but now it looked like she wasn’t going to be fit to move for a few days, perhaps more than a week. But it wasn’t all bad. It had given her the chance to put things into perspective. What had seemed like an impossible thing—returning home—now looked like just the thing she needed.

  Cassy’s cat leaped deftly from cushion to cushion, then along the back of the couch before coming to rest somewhere near Helena’s left shoulder. He started to purr loudly.

  “I knew there was a reason I agreed to come here instead of renting a place,” she said, rubbing the back of Herzog’s ear.

  “Good to see you again, Hell,” Herzog replied without the thrum of his purr being interrupted. Helena had never been sure if Herzog was actually talking or if she was somehow picking up his thoughts. While she had been living with Mom, it had seemed like the most natural thing and she had never once questioned it. It was only after having lived a ‘normal’ life for so long that it now struck her as odd.

  “How’s she been without me? Be honest.”

  “She’s doing well.”

  “Happy?”

  There was no reply to that, only the rumble that seemed to come up from deep inside the cat. Helena had heard a Canadian friend of her refer to it as ‘ron-roner’ which seemed appropriate, like the sound of an idling car.

  “Any men in her life?” Herzog stretched his mouth wide and yawned silently. “Don’t avoid my questions little cat. I fed you for the first sixteen years of my life, cleaned your litter tray, and had to tidy up fur-balls, so you owe me pal.”

  “We’ll find someone for her, I’m sure.”

  “Any leads?”

  He seemed to think about it for a moment before answering. “Well there is this one guy…”

  The door opened suddenly and in came Cassy with armfuls of grocery bags. She slammed the door closed with the edge of her foot.

  “One guy that what?” asked Cassy, peeking over the bags. “What’s he saying, Hell? I swear, Herzog, if you’re causing trouble.”

  The cat didn’t wait around. He sprung from his perch and found his cat-flap.

  “Good luck ladies,” he called before exiting, “A cat’s got to do what a cat’s got to do.”

  After Cassy had sorted out the groceries and retrieved two pint-sized tubs of local ice cream, she gave one to her sister and she snuggled up beside her. Helena took the tub and dove straight in, coming up only to give Cassy a scrutinizing glare.

  “So who is this guy then, the one you have your eye on?” she wondered. Cassy dismissed the question, but Helena wasn’t going to let it go. “If you’re not going to tell me then I’m going to figure it out. You’re not the only one who can solve mysteries.”

  “Knock yourself out, sis. I’m not saying anything.”

  “You’re in love with that cop, aren’t you? The deputy?”

  Cassy nearly choked on her hazelnut swirl.

  “I always was the better sleuth, little sister.”

  Dear Reader,

  Hi there. Thank you for reading.

  I hope you’ll leave a review and/or rating at the retail website where you purchased it, I appreciate you and your feedback.

  Thanks again,

  Wendy Meadows

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  About the Author

  Wendy Meadows is an emerging author of cozy mysteries. She lives in “The Granite State” with her husband, two sons, two cats and lovable Labradoodle.

  When she isn’t working on her stories she likes to tend to her flowers, relax with her pets and play video games with her family.

  Get in Touch with Wendy

  www.wendymeadows.com

  Also by Wendy Mead
ows

  Maple Hills Cozy Mystery Series

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  Alaska Cozy Mystery Series

  Sweet Peach Bakery Cozy Series

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