Cremains of the Day Read online

  “Okay, but who tied you up and how did you and they get in here?” The logical question seemed to stump her for a second. Perhaps I was being too harsh. Katie could be dealing with shock and I just couldn’t see the outward signs due to her bravado.

  “I don’t know who tied me up. I was in the back alley on my way in for a few things Gina had asked me to pick up earlier, when all of the sudden I see this guy lying at my feet about a yard away from the door. I bent down to see if he was just sleeping off a drunk when another guy looms out of the darkness and shoves me into the store. He tied me up and told me to shut up when I told him I wouldn’t say anything if he’d just walk away without hurting me. And then he duct-taped my mouth shut and left out the back door.”

  Since my cellphone was still in my hand, I bent to unlock it before Katie drew her next breath. A body in the alley and a tied-up woman in the café was not good, no matter how it happened. I should have called the police the first time I’d mentioned it instead of letting Katie talk me into waiting. Due to my anxiety over the whole situation, I fumbled the six simple numbers of my password three times. Sure, I’d been running on adrenaline and afraid Katie wasn’t breathing, but that was not going to be a good enough excuse to keep Chief of Police Burton from railing at me for my failure to do the right thing the first time.

  “I think you’re going to want to check out the guy in the back alley before you call anything in,” Katie said, interrupting my attempt to dial.

  I paused to peer at her in disbelief. She had been tied up and “left for dead” in her own words, and there could be a body out in the back alley. What more could she possibly want to talk about before I got the authorities involved? “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure your ex-husband is lying out there dead.”

  What? I couldn’t have heard her right. Waldo would never come to this part of town and certainly not to the alley. As far as the dead part—he might not be the best of people, but I couldn’t imagine anyone would actually take the time and energy to kill him. What the hell could he have done to deserve to die out there?

  I was not proud of that last thought. But there had been a lot going on in our marriage I had not known about. Perhaps this was just one more thing I should have been prepared for when the preacher had said for better or worse. Waldo’s worse gave a whole other meaning to the phrase.

  “Wait,” I said, not wanting to go off half-cocked or call in some vague, possible crime based solely on a “pretty sure” from the town’s drama queen. “Are you not sure if it’s Waldo, or not sure if he’s dead?”

  “Both. Either.” She shrugged.

  I dialed the next four numbers for my password and got it right on my fourth try. After hitting speed dial number six, I kept the phone to my ear as I headed for the back of the store and the door out to the alley. I wouldn’t touch anything, I promised myself. I shouldn’t have touched Katie at all to begin with and would probably get my ass figuratively handed to me for that once the police got here. Not to mention, I had seen enough crime-scene investigation television to know not to incriminate myself. But I had to make sure it really was Waldo out there, or make sure it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, I was going to bean Katie on the head and maybe stick some duct tape to her eyebrows. See how she liked that impromptu wax for giving me heart palpitations.

  Using one of the messy napkins from the counter, I turned the knob on the back door and pushed slowly. I didn’t know where exactly the body was located. I certainly didn’t want to smash whoever the poor sucker was in the head with the door. He might not be dead at all, but regardless, I was not going to add insult to injury.

  “Police station, what can I do for you?”

  I stopped in the open doorway and gave Suzy at the police station the lowdown of what had happened, or what I had been told happened. Suzy told me to stay on the phone. I heard a beep and took the phone away from my face long enough to see who on earth was calling. Great. Gina. She was probably wondering where in the hell her sauerkraut was.

  “Suzy, I have to answer this call. I’ll get right back to you.”

  “Chief’s not going to like it.”

  “Tell Burton it couldn’t be avoided.”

  I clicked over and didn’t get a chance to open my mouth before Gina said, “Sauerkraut, Tallie. I have about twenty-five people wanting more sauerkraut with their sausages and you know how I don’t like to disappoint customers.”

  “Yes, well . . . Gina. We have a bit of a crisis over here and quite honestly, sauerkraut is about the last thing on my mind at this point. I think Waldo might be dead out in your back alley and your cousin was recently tied up and duct-taped inside your café. You might want to send someone else over for the food while I wait here for the police.”

  Gina had been squawking nonsensically the whole time I had been talking, but once I took a breath she jammed herself into the conversation.

  “What in the hell is going on?”

  “I think I just explained it pretty succinctly.” In my edginess over the whole situation I adopted formality to keep myself from the shakes. “I’m waiting for the police and you need to send someone else for the sauerkraut. I have to go now so I can call Suzy at the police station back. Talk to you soon.” I hung up because another call was beeping in my ear again. I almost never used this thing and now all of a sudden I was as busy as a New York City switchboard operator from the 1940s.

  It looked like I wouldn’t have to call Suzy back. Suzy was calling me.

  “You haven’t gone out back yet, have you?” Suzy asked in lieu of a greeting.

  I had my foot raised to cross the threshold and kept it hesitating there while I said nothing. Should I stay or should I go now? Old song, but very pertinent question. I decided to step out instead of back in. If Waldo was out there, I wanted to see it with my own eyes, not just go on Katie’s sketchy information.

  “Chief is coming down right now. He was out on another call, but he’s about two minutes away. You do not want to be caught in that alley, honey.”

  “Then I won’t get caught.” I hung up on her before more warnings could be issued. I had about a minute to scope things out. The limited time could go very fast.

  Leaving the door opened behind me, I stepped out into the alley, then cursed the tall floodlight for being blown. The town was supposed to take care of these kinds of things, but they didn’t always worry so much when it was downtown with other lights in the vicinity. Of course, the pool of darkness was exactly where I could see a faint outline of something lying on the ground.

  Did I really want to see Waldo dead? I mean, I didn’t like him and near the end of the divorce I’d had a few inappropriate thoughts about wanting to see him thrown off a bridge. But that had just been frustration and hatred for the way he’d treated me. I wouldn’t have really ever wanted to see anything like that. This was different, though. If he was really dead out back, I didn’t think I wanted to see him like that. I had a hard enough time with cleaned-up corpses in the funeral home who looked like they were only sleeping.

  Couldn’t I just wait for the police to come and have them tell me themselves what had happened?

  But Waldo and I had been married for six years, and I wanted to know if it really was him out back of the shop he would never have stepped one expensively-shod foot into.

  Thankfully, Gina kept a small flashlight on the keychain for the shop. With trepidation and shaking fingers, I pressed the button, then had a hard time keeping the light on. It flickered over the scene before me like a weird rave strobe.

  Yep, it was definitely Waldo. His hair was standing up from his forehead in a way that would have appalled him and had him scurrying to the bathroom for another dose of gel. I acknowledged that was a totally inappropriate thought when I could be staring at my dead ex-husband, but I also knew I was just trying to deal with the shock. Other than being crumpled against the wall, nothing else looked out of place. His suit was perfectly straight on his
tall frame. His tie was not even askew.

  And as much as I had ignored orders to stay out of here, I certainly wasn’t going to touch him and disturb the scene when it was obvious something foul-playish had happened.

  I was about to step back into Bean There when flashing blue and red lights streaked the alley wall. It cast the whole place in an eerie light, a surreal light where I would have sworn I saw Waldo’s chest jerk. Foul-playish or not, if Waldo was breathing then I was not going to leave him out here.

  Running back out into the alley, I put my hand on his throat and came up with a pulse. “Hurry!” I yelled down the alley. “He’s still breathing and I have no idea where he’s hurt!”

  * * *

  In the end, Gina got her sauerkraut and a bunch of other stuff she carried from the refrigerator of Bean There herself. She set up a food operation at the fire station and fed people for the several hours it took to “canvas the scene,” as Burton said. A lot of the funeral-goers were on various law-enforcement teams in the area, and they all trooped over in their Sunday best to see if they could help. Burton liked his fresh coffee as much as the next person and was trying to get things taken care of quickly so Gina could open in the morning for her regulars. The fact that Gina’s mom was his cousin probably didn’t hurt, either.

  I stayed back to fill coffee cups that were then gripped tightly in busy hands and dish up more bowls of chicken corn soup than I thought we had people. My mom brought over the slow cooker and started up her famous chili, while several other women also brought theirs with a variety of things just warmed from their freezers.

  “Emergency rations,” Erma Kettleman said as she staked out one corner of the folding table to set up ham-and-bean soup and a basket of fresh-made bread. A lot of the town had wandered down this way once they heard the sirens going and saw the flashing blue and red lights. They weren’t necessarily nosy . . . No, that’s not true: They were very nosy and not ashamed of it.

  “I heard tell that’s your husband out there.” Lonny Jenkins was not my favorite person in town and had made that distinction for me when we were in seventh grade and he asked me to the winter formal just to win a bet for ten bucks. He lost when I said no, but still.

  “Ex-husband,” I said and turned my back to talk to Gina. “Make sure you pick up the donation jar and empty it. We don’t want anyone to accidentally walk off with any of the money.” I faced Lonny again and gave him my biggest, fakest smile. “Did you need something else?”

  He frowned. “Just a sausage.”

  “Coming up. Make sure you leave something in the donation jar.”

  It was about nine when Chief of Police James Burton came through the big front double doors of the firehouse. He tried to make a beeline for me, yet kept getting waylaid. I wondered if this was divine intervention for me to have time to sneak out the back. The thought died quickly because he was in front of me before I could make a run for it.

  “Need to talk to you, girl. Take off the apron and meet me in that blue salon thing your dad has on the first floor.” His silvering hair fairly bristled on his head, and his mustache vibrated with his intensity. Just under six feet tall and fit, he was a few years past fifty, and thought I was a nuisance to society at large.

  I did not want to meet him in the blue salon, even though it was one of our prettiest. But Burton had already walked away, back through the throng of people trying to get some juicy piece of gossip no one else had so they would seem in the know.

  I had a feeling I was about to get more of an earful than I had ever hoped for.

  I took off the apron with a sigh.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Gina said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I know you didn’t love Waldo anymore, but it still has to be weird to find him in an alley all unconscious and stuff.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Just go see what Burton wants, honey; don’t sweat it. I’ll corral everyone out of here. I’m about out of food, anyway. I have no idea what I’m going to serve at the Bean tomorrow. Did we empty out the fridge?”

  “Not entirely.” I placed the stained apron on the foldout table and looked longingly at all the cleanup that had to be done. I could stay and ignore Burton’s summons. Of course, it wouldn’t get me anywhere but yelled at, no matter how tempting. However, I’d rather be covered in the smell of sauerkraut pots than face the truth of what had happened this evening. Finding Waldo in that alley might be something I could never forget.

  And tomorrow I might be reminded endlessly of the encounter because I had houses to clean and was almost positive my various employers were going to have a ton of questions. It was one of their own who had been jumped, or mugged, or something.

  They’d be curious. And despite the fact that I was back on the wrong side of the tracks, they’d try to pump me for information. Not to mention, he’d been in a dark alley by himself, presumably. It was not going to be a happy day. Oh, man. Darla was first up on my list of people to clean for after her party this evening. Questions would be inevitable.

  My uncle Sherman, resident giant at six-foot-six and the current head of the fire department, came over as I was walking around the corner of the table heading to the funeral home.

  “Don’t keep Burton waiting, Tallie. The guy’s a son of a bitch, but hopefully he’ll know what he’s doing this time. As much as I dislike Waldo, I hope he pulls through, though I wouldn’t mind if he was maimed.” He rested a beefy hand on my shoulder.

  The attitude reminded me there was bad blood between the two heads of our emergency-services departments. I knew why Burton didn’t like me, but had no idea what the deal was with Uncle Sherman. Good God, was this day never ever going to end?

  “That’s not funny, Sherman.” Although better maimed than dead.

  As I walked out the front doors of the firehouse, I made the right turn on the relatively quiet sidewalk to see what the chief of police wanted. None of it was going to be to my liking. Waldo and I had been lawfully divorced for two months, but officially separated for about six months before that. I had no idea why he had been out in the alley, and none as to why Katie had been tied up in the store. It was too much to think it was a coincidence, but I was having a hard time thinking of Katie and Waldo being together. Unless, of course, he was back on the “wrong side of the tracks” again, as his mother had said when he started dating me.

  With my head down, I stared at the familiar cracks in the sidewalk while I dragged my feet over the ten yards separating me from the front door of the funeral parlor. And because I was doing everything I could to drag out the time before I had to meet Burton, I did not see anyone on the sidewalk with me until I nearly toppled a guy standing on the stairs of Graver’s.

  He had dark hair and wore a light coat in nondescript dark blue. From the stitching on the jacket, I knew he was from the flower shop, but only Dobbins ever delivered to us, and this was certainly not a smiley twenty-year-old kid. This one was all man. He was scowling and had fierce dark eyebrows to match his dark hair. I couldn’t see much more with the streetlight shedding light the wrong way, and I refused to admit I wanted to be able to see more. Regardless of the rest, he had a huge spray of funeral flowers in his hands. Quite honestly, I was a little skeptical of this whole night, so call me rude when I immediately took him to task for not having the spray here five hours ago.

  “Those were supposed to be here this afternoon. And where’s my usual guy, Dobbins? Dobbins is the only one who ever brings our deliveries, because my father likes that they don’t have to be rearranged when they get here.” I had my hands on my hips and my feet spread apart in classic offensive posture without a single conscious directive from my brain. Part of me realized I was transferring my anger and anxiety onto the nearest source, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  “I got lost.” The guy shrugged. “Dobbins has the week off.” His voice was gruff and yet smooth at the same time. I felt a nether part or two tingle and told them to calm the hell down at th
is totally and completely inappropriate time. Too much had happened in the last several hours for any kind of tingling to happen.

  “How on earth did you get lost coming two blocks over and one block down? This is not a big town. It can’t take more than twenty minutes to wander aimlessly over the entire place, especially in a car.”

  His gaze zeroed in on me. Though I had wanted to know what the whole of his face looked like a moment ago, when he focused on me, I would have chosen to go on ignorant forever. He was beautiful, and not in a fake, movie-star way, but a rugged, manly way. My heart beat a little faster. I told the damn thing to stop that right this very instant.

  “I need to deliver these immediately for the funeral.”

  “Nice way to avoid the question and the accusation. If those are the flowers I was missing for the funeral this afternoon, then you are way late and about twenty dollars too short. Monty is not going to be happy with you when you get back to the flower shop. I can tell you that. And you’re way too early for the next funeral.”

  “What do you mean, the next funeral?”

  His gaze went from intense to laser-strength. I found I did not like being on the receiving end of that look. I backed up a step and went around him to get the upper hand on the steps to the front door. I wasn’t a shorty, and I wasn’t little in the same reference, but this guy towered over me.

  “Well?”

  Oh, he actually wanted an answer? “I don’t know. Whatever funeral is next on the books.” The information seemed to make him stand taller and take even more of an interest in me, though I hadn’t thought it was possible.

  He broke eye contact for a moment to look back over his shoulder. I took the opportunity to hustle up the rest of the stairs and jerk the door open. I heard him shout something, but ignored him in favor of locking the door behind me, then immediately going to find Burton. I’d rather deal with a reprimand for not listening to the chief of police’s commands about going into the crime scene than deal with whatever that had been out on the front stoop. I really hoped Dobbins would be back for the next delivery. The thought of dealing with that guy ever again didn’t sit well with me.