Varnished without a Trace Read online

  “It sure would be nice if the dead could speak, wouldn’t it, Dad?” I asked as I waited for Burton to pick up.

  “Not if their jaws are wired shut. I wouldn’t be able to understand anything they’d say.” He leaned back against the edge of the metal table used for preparing corpses in the basement.

  I snorted in laughter after checking that he had actually made a joke. Maybe Max volunteering to help out had finally put the old man in a better mood.

  “What, Tallie? I’m in the middle of things.” Burton sounded less jovial, but that was okay.

  “The corpse is Jerry Howard, recently deceased in West Virginia, and someone stole him from the funeral home down there, then transported him up here. He didn’t have a dent in his head when he died. That was after.”

  Dead silence on the other end from Burton, though I could hear background noise that told me he was at the police station.

  “Dare I ask how you got that info?” he finally said.

  “You certainly may.” And I was very proud to share, because it was all very aboveboard. “I called the funeral directors association and found out that an APB had been put out for a missing corpse. Called the completely incompetent mortician who did work on him and then lost him and verified his identity via the internet. It’s creepy how much he looks like Hoagie. How do you think someone found him and brought him here?”

  “And you seriously won’t consider being a part of the force?” Burton asked.

  I was taken aback for a second because he actually sounded serious for the first time ever. Normally, that was said with a load of derision behind it, but this time it almost sounded wishful.

  “No, Burton, I’m better off where I am. I finally know what I want to be when I grow up, and it’s not with you as a boss.”

  That got him to snort. “Yeah, I think we’d both end up under your father’s care if we actually had to work together on a daily basis, instead of only when people around here can’t keep their murderous tendencies to themselves.”

  “Truth right there.” I smiled, even though he couldn’t see it.

  “All right, can you shoot me everything you’ve found? Did he have any relatives that are still living?”

  I was prepared for that and patted myself on the back for making notes. “His wife, whose name is Wanda, but the funeral director says she’s missing and didn’t pay for the services yet, so he’s not going to worry about anything until he finds her.”

  Burton hummed across the line. “I wonder if she killed him and didn’t want anyone to find out and so brought him up here to dump his body once she stole him.”

  “That’s more your territory than mine. I’m still trying to figure out who out of everyone who disliked Ronda disliked her enough to actually kill her.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s almost always the spouse, and Hoagie being gone is a serious mark in the column that says he did it.”

  “I’m not arguing, but it just feels wrong.”

  “Wrong or not, it would make sense. She wasn’t nice to him and maybe he had an insurance policy on her. We need to find out who inherits.” He’d said that last part as if to himself, but I knew a way I could get the information, so I let him sign off and immediately called my friend and cleaning partner, Letty.

  Time to clean house, and for that I needed to have a meeting with my ladies. For tonight, I was done. The timer in the kitchen went off and the smells drifting into the living room were too good to pass up. Tomorrow was soon enough to get back to body tracking and murderer finding.

  * * *

  “What’s our schedule like this week, Letty?” After leaving the info I’d found in Burton and my dad’s care last night and eating enough leftovers to almost be embarrassed, I’d texted my crew and asked them to meet me at the Bean in the morning. I was on a run for breakfast there every morning and wasn’t yet ready to cut my streak short.

  I figured I’d check in to see if I remembered correctly that one of Hoagie’s children had scheduled us to clean up after their after Christmas party. I hadn’t been able to find my calendar and didn’t want to be wrong.

  I had thought that eventually I wouldn’t have much to do with the cleaning business anymore. Tallie’s Queens of Squeegeedom could take care of themselves. I didn’t call us that anywhere but in my mind. In fact, the company, as little as it was, had become Graver’s Cleaning Crew.

  I now had four employees, with Letty as my right-hand woman. She was practically the runner of the show, but she didn’t want the responsibility of the taxes and check writing part, so I kept that and she got to do what she excelled at, which was clean to her big heart’s content. As well as handling the first interviews for hiring and placing the jobs with the right person.

  Or at least that was how it was supposed to work when my dad bought the café next door to the funeral home. I had run the café for a few months and had just watched over the cleaning crew. But then my mother decided that she really enjoyed working at that café my dad had bought, enough to boot me out. There were no hard feelings for the boot, because I had been just about to ask if someone else could take over because I missed cleaning.

  There was something so satisfying about taking a dirty place and making sure it absolutely shone that I just hadn’t gotten from serving people before and after funerals. I thought the café was a great idea, and I was glad I’d tried it, but I had been doing the right thing all along and just never realized it until I’d removed myself from the joys of a clean house.

  The café/reception area that Mom now ran next to my father’s funeral home had taken off, with most people deciding to have the service inside the funeral home, the goodbye in the tunnel that connected the home to the new business and then move to the reception area to have the life celebration.

  Sometimes they even brought over the urn to have one final lunch with the loved ones if we had done a cremation. Some people were uncomfortable with that, but others loved it. And when it came to burying someone who had meant the world to you, it was totally at your discretion how that was carried out. This was the no-judgiest of no-judgment zones.

  But I had liked cleaning so much more and was happy I was back at it and working part-time when my family needed me at the funeral home.

  “We’re in good shape,” Letty said as we sat down to coffee and crullers paid for from the Graver’s Cleaning Crew bank account.

  We were still waiting for the other ladies to show up for our company meeting, so I thought I’d talk to her about the more sensitive stuff before anyone else got there.

  “I have the girls booked up for this week and into next,” she continued. “We have several spots through the rest of the month and could take on another weekly cleaning if we can find one, but other than that, we’re running smooth like a vacuum cleaner on a wood floor.”

  Smiling at her phrasing, I checked that particular worry off my list of things to be concerned about. At first, I’d been reluctant to take on Letty’s friends, who’d been envious of her good fortune and fantastic deal with me. But they’d convinced me that we could be a formidable team if we were all under one umbrella instead of all working independently. I’d taken the chance, mainly worried and up nights thinking that maybe there wouldn’t be enough work, but for once, I’d been completely wrong, like wrong to the extreme of wrong.

  And never happier to be wrong. I had ended up taking a cut of all the jobs when Letty yelled at me for not paying myself for my time in handling all the business aspects. My bank account grew every month and I earned every penny by also taking on the responsibility of following up with anyone who had not paid their bill on time.

  “Okay, that’s good.” I wasn’t sure if I should mention Hoagie. We used to buy our cleaning products from him, but now we only bought things at the hardware store if we ran out at the last minute and didn’t have time to order from the commercial supply company. So she knew him, but might not be as invested in him as I had been.

  “Did you hear about Hoagie
?” she asked before I could decide if I was being ridiculous.

  “Yeah, and I found his twin dead behind the hardware store.”

  “Wait, his actual twin? He always said he was an only.”

  “Not his actual twin.” Although that sparked something in my brain, and I wrote it down just in case I might be able to look into that later. Maybe they’d been separated at birth. I really needed to ask my mom about how Hoagie was related to us, and see if he’d had brothers and sisters. “And I didn’t actually find him. Nathan saw him from his staircase behind the hardware store.”

  “It’s so sad. And he’s still missing, then?”

  “Nathan’s really torn up about it,” Jenna said as she walked up, flanked by Camilla and Annie. They each took seats. She sat next to Camilla, who sat next to Annie, who rounded out the table.

  Letty patted Jenna’s hand. “He was one of the nicest people ever, even if I wasn’t overly fond of his wife. I can’t believe she’s dead. But she must have been good in some ways or Hoagie wouldn’t have stayed, right? I’d like to think she had redeeming qualities that only he knew about.” There was her big heart hard at work. And then she asked the question everyone seemed to have at the top of their mind. “Who would do something like this?”

  “I have no idea, but I’d like to know,” I said.

  “Nathan would too. He’s helpless over at the store without the owner.” Jenna sat back in her chair with a frown on her face.

  “That’s so strange to me.” I stirred my coffee, staring out the front window to the newly falling snow. “With how long he’s worked there, I would think Nathan would have access to everything.”

  “Nathan did too, but that bi—Ronda decided it would be bad business.” And then Jenna started crying. “Sorry, it’s just that Nathan is so stressed out and we’re fighting.” Wiping her eyes, she tried a weak smile. “It’ll be okay eventually. I know it. And Hoagie told Nathan he would make sure he was taken care of if anything ever happened, so we should be fine.”

  “You know if you ever need anything, all you have to do is ask, Jenna.” I patted her hand this time, and she smiled a real smile through those tears.

  “I so appreciate that, Tallie. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Right now we’re okay because there’s a bookkeeper who releases the paycheck into Nathan’s account, without input from Hoagie. Thankfully, Nathan is on salary. And hopefully, soon Hoagie will be found and everything will be okay.”

  “In the meantime, don’t forget to let me know if you need something.”

  “If something comes to me, I’ll let you know. I just want the person who killed Ronda found and then find Hoagie himself.”

  I was working on that, but I thought it better not to let everyone know. So we got down to work.

  “Okay, so we have a new opportunity on the table that I wanted to run by all of you. How do we feel about cleaning up after fires?”

  A lively discussion followed, and in the end, the consensus seemed to be that we could at least try it during these few weeks. I thanked them all and sent them on their way.

  And then it was just me and Letty sitting in the Bean.

  “Are you going to be looking into it?” Letty’s voice shook a little across the table.

  “I’m currently in negotiations with Uncle Sherman and Burton.”

  Letty’s laughter was muffled behind her hand, but I still heard it loud and clear. We were talking about death, so it wasn’t a big laugh, but more of the kind of laugh when you surprise someone into being baffled by your statement to the point that they can’t help but laugh. Yeah, that kind. And I was getting it across a meal I’d just footed the bill for. I looked around to make sure Mama Shirley wasn’t paying any attention.

  “Hey, at least there hasn’t been any yelling yet, and if I can help in any way, I’d like to. After five suspicious deaths in town and being involved in solving each of them, I think Burton might actually value my opinion.”

  “There is that,” Letty said. “So you’ll be getting involved?”

  “I’m going to try to use the tip line this time.”

  Another snicker from her. Traitor.

  “I’m going to go now,” Letty said, rising from her chair and taking her clean plate with her. “Go talk to Burton, or at least call him.” She hummed to herself for a moment. “You know, I’m doing Chrissy Jessup’s house this afternoon, if you want to make sure that we’re all working to the level you think we should be.”

  My brain shot through the list of people I knew because that name was familiar. In a split-second, I came up with Chrissy Jessup, who had once been Chrissy Hogart, the daughter of the missing man known to those who had loved him as Hoagie. The man of the hour we were all looking for and someone dead had been impersonating.

  Chrissy Jessup, who everyone had thought would marry Nathan and keep the store in the family.

  How was that for fate?

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where is my vacuum? I have to have my vacuum and my squeegee, and that little caddy thing I had made for all the girls. Oh, and I can’t forget to take my rags and that bottle of spritzer that I like to use on the mirrors.” I ran around the apartment looking for all the things I usually kept in the back of the car. I’d taken them out for the holidays and had not planned on putting them back until after the first of the year.

  I’d taken the week off between Christmas and New Year to spend with Max at Letty’s insistence and so thought I’d have time to reload my car, but now I needed it pronto and didn’t know where everything was.

  Max put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all in here.” He directed me to the small closet I’d used as a pantry since I’d moved in. Because we now had a real, honest-to-goodness pantry, Max must have put my supplies in the closet to keep them all together. Smart man.

  I was happy to find all my cleaning equipment nicely and cleanly stacked in the small space. I started dragging out stuff and putting it on the floor behind me. I heard rustling and saw that Max had grabbed a dolly from next to the fridge and was loading it up with my things.

  “You are just the sweetest,” I told him, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “All part of the service, ma’am,” he responded in a horrible Spaghetti Western accent.

  I nudged him with my shoulder and kissed him again. “You don’t mind that I’m heading out to clean when I could be here, helping you, instead of snooping where I’m wanted but maybe shouldn’t be anyway?”

  “Let’s just leave it at you’re going to help Letty with a big job and keep everyone else in the dark altogether. Maybe that way Burton’s ears won’t be burning because we’re talking about him, and he won’t show up right where you are right at the wrong time, like he has before.”

  He was right. Burton might have said I could ask around about the corpse, but as for going to the deceased’s kids, we hadn’t talked about that.

  Max’s comment earned him a smile as I traipsed out the door and then hoofed it down the stairs with him following behind me. I carried some of the stuff and he had the rest on the dolly. The funeral home had an elevator, but it only went from the first floor to the basement, where the bodies were prepared for burial. Which did not help me at the moment.

  Max and I shuffled out the back door to my waiting car. The hearses were back there too, but unlike the norm lately, no one had parked me in. Finally! Maybe me leaving sticky notes on every car’s windshield with the words DO NOT PARK TALLIE IN OR I WILL FIND YOU AND PUT YOU IN THE BASEMENT had finally worked.

  I opened the trunk of my old, beloved Lexus from days gone by and arranged all my cleaning paraphernalia in the back. When I turned around to say goodbye to Max, he grabbed me up in a big hug.

  “Be careful out there, and don’t forget to avoid trouble like you avoid bleu cheese dressing.”

  I laughed, gave him one last squeeze and then climbed into my car. I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the Jessup house, or what information I could glean withou
t seeming to even be interested beyond that of a concerned neighbor. But no one was going to stop me from at least trying.

  * * *

  In the end, I decided to play the so-sorry-for-the-death, let-us-know-if-we-can-help-with-anything-with-the-funeral bit. It had worked wonders before. I wasn’t above using it again.

  Pulling up at the Jessup house, I parked behind Letty and took a deep breath before opening the trunk of my car. I could do this. I could go in and talk to a woman who was my cousin to find out what she knew about her mother’s death and enemies without losing it. I’d done it before and I would do it again. Hopefully not, but so far, my life away from Waldo had been a roller coaster of things. I’d survive this too, even if it was behind the mask of a dust wand and a vacuum cleaner.

  I was good at what I did, be that working at the funeral home, being a partner to Max, or cleaning houses. But Letty had always been better at cleaning than me and I wanted to talk to Chrissy to see what she had to say.

  I shouldn’t have worried. Letty met me at the back door with a smile and a quick hug.

  “You know I love you and think that you do amazing things. But how about we leave the cleaning to me today and you work on wiping down the counters and keeping Chrissy company?”

  “Are you saying I don’t know what I’m doing?” I asked. “Because I do know what I’m doing, I’ll have you know.”

  “Knock it off. We all know you’re an awesome maid.” She swatted me on the arm. “I’ve learned tons from you. It’s only after having worked for you that I was able to up my game. Don’t be an idiot. I’m just saying that if you stay near them without having to turn on the vacuum, it will be easier for you to talk with them.” She pushed me farther into the house, through the mudroom, into a laundry room filled with the latest in technology. “The kitchen seems to be where they stay most of the time.”

  “Oh.” I got momentarily distracted by the chrome stacked washer and dryer. I should have thought about that set before we bought the one in our new place.