A Ghostly Murder

 

Dedication

To Eddy, Jack, Austin, Brady, Linda and John Robert Lowry, Tracy, David, Ben and Maddie Darlington. The loves of my life.

 

Contents

 

Chapter 1

D
ing, ding, ding.

The ornamental bell on an old cemetery headstone rang out. No one touching it. No wind or breeze.

The string attached to the top of the bell hung down the stone and disappeared into the ground. To the naked eye it would seem as though the bell dinged from natural causes, like the wind, but my eye zeroed in on the string as it slowly moved up and down. Deliberately.

I stepped back and looked at the stone. The chiseled words I
TOLD YOU
I
WAS SICK.
M
AMIE
S
UE
P
RESTON
were scrolled in fancy lettering. Her date of death was a few years before I took over as undertaker at Eternal Slumber Funeral Home.

Granted, it was a family business I had taken over from my parents and my granny. Some family business.

Ding, ding, ding.

I looked at the bell. A petite older woman, with a short gray bob neatly combed under a small pillbox hat, was doing her best to sit ladylike on the stone, with one leg crossed over the other. She wore a pale green skirt suit. Her fingernail tapped the bell, causing it to ding.

I couldn't help but notice the large diamond on her finger, the strand of pearls around her neck and some more wrapped on her wrist. And with a gravestone like that . . . I knew she came from money.

“Honey child, you can see me, can't you?” she asked. Her lips smacked together. She grinned, not a tooth in her head. There was a cane in her hand. She tapped the stone with it. “Can you believe they buried me without my teeth?”

I closed my eyes. Squeezed them tight. Opened them back up.

“Ta-­da. Still here.” She put the cane on the ground and tap-­danced around it on her own grave.

“Don't do that. It's bad luck.” I repeated another Southern phrase I had heard all my life.

She did another little giddy-­up.

“I'm serious,” I said in a flat, inflectionless voice. “Never dance or walk over someone's grave. It's bad luck.”

“Honey, my luck couldn't get any worse than it already is.” Her face was drawn. Her onyx eyes set. Her jaw tensed. “Thank Gawd you are here. There is no way I can cross over without my teeth.” She smacked her lips. “Oh, by the way, Digger Spears just sent me, and I passed Cephus Hardy on the way. He told me exactly where I could find you.”

She leaned up against the stone.

“Let me introduce myself.” She stuck the cane in the crook of her elbow and adjusted the pillbox hat on her head. “I'm the wealthiest woman in Sleepy Hollow, Mamie Sue Preston, and I can pay you whatever you'd like to get me to the other side. But first, can you find my teeth?”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. This couldn't be happening. Couldn't I have just a few days off between my Betweener clients?

I knew exactly what she meant when she said she needed my help for her cross over, and it wasn't because she was missing her dentures.

“Whatdaya say?” Mamie Sue pulled some cash out of her suit pocket.

She licked her finger and peeled each bill back one at a time.

“Emma Lee,” I heard someone call. I turned to see Granny waving a handkerchief in the air and bolting across the cemetery toward me.

Her flaming-­red hair darted about like a cardinal as she weaved in and out of the gravestones.

“See,” I muttered under my breath and made sure my lips didn't move. “Granny knows not to step on a grave.”

“That's about the only thing Zula Fae Raines Payne knows,” Mamie said.

My head whipped around. Mamie's words got my attention. Amusement lurked in her dark eyes.

“Everyone is wondering what you are doing clear over here when you are overseeing Cephus Hardy's funeral way over there.” Granny took a swig of the can of Stroh's she was holding.

Though our small town of Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, was a dry county—­which meant liquor sales were against the law—­ I had gotten special permission to have a beer toast at Cephus Hardy's funeral.

I glanced back at the final resting place where everyone from Cephus's funeral was still sitting under the burial awning, sipping on the beer.

“I was just looking at this old stone,” I lied.

Mamie's lips pursed suspiciously when she looked at Granny. Next thing I knew, Mamie was sitting on her stone, legs crossed, tapping the bell.

Ding, ding, ding.
“We have a goner who needs help!” Mamie continued to ding the bell. “A goner who is as dead as yesterday.” She twirled her cane around her finger.

I did my best to ignore her. If Granny knew I was able to see the ghosts of dead ­people—­not just any dead ­people, murdered dead ­people—­she'd have me committed for what Doc Clyde called the Funeral Trauma.

A few months ago and a ­couple ghosts ago, I was knocked out cold from a big plastic Santa that Artie, from Artie's Meat and Deli, had stuck on the roof of his shop during the winter months. It just so happened I was walking on the sidewalk when the sun melted the snow away, sending the big fella off the roof right on top of me. I woke up in the hospital and saw that my visitor was one of my clients—­one of my
dead
clients. I thought I was a goner just like him, because my Eternal Slumber clients weren't alive, they were dead, and here was one standing next to me.

When the harsh realization came to me that I wasn't dead and I was able to see dead ­people, I told Doc Clyde about it. He gave me some little pills and diagnosed me with the Funeral Trauma, a.k.a. a case of the crazies.

He was nice enough to say he thought I had been around dead bodies too long since I had grown up in the funeral home with Granny and my parents.

My parents took early retirement and moved to Florida, while my granny also retired, leaving me and my sister, Charlotte Rae, in charge.

“Well?” Granny tapped her toe and crossed her arms. “Are you coming back to finish the funeral or not?” She gave me the stink-­eye, along with a once-­over, before she slung back the can and finished off the beer. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm feeling great, Zula Fae Raines Payne.” Mamie Sue leaned her cane up against her stone. She jumped down and clasped her hands in front of her. She stretched them over her head. She jostled her head side to side. “Much better now that I can move about, thanks to Emma Lee.”

Ahem,
I cleared my throat.

“Yes.” I smiled and passed Granny on the way back over to Cephus Hardy's funeral. “I'm on my way.”

“Wait!” Mamie called out. “I was murdered! Aren't you going to help me? Everyone said that you were the one to help me!”

Everyone
? I groaned and glanced back.

Mamie Sue Preston planted her hands on her small hips. Her eyes narrowed. Her bubbly personality had dimmed. She'd been dead a long time. She wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, and neither was I.

 

Chapter 2

W
hat was going on with you at the cemetery this morning?” Charlotte Rae asked once she pushed open my office door. She leaned on the door frame and tapped the toe of her fancy black high-­heeled shoe.

Her long red hair cascaded down the front of her shoulders. Her green eyes bored into me. She drummed her fingers together, tapping her perfectly manicured pink fingernails together. She wore a pair of black slacks, a white blouse and hot pink jewelry to finish off the look.

“Nothing was going on with me,” I responded and took my hands out of the filing cabinet. I pushed the drawer back.

There was only one person who knew about my gift as a Betweener. Sheriff Jack Henry Ross, my boyfriend and Sleepy Hollow's head law enforcer.

I closed the filing cabinet where we kept the files of our clients who were already six feet under.

There wasn't a file anywhere on Mamie Sue Preston. When I had gotten home from sticking Cephus in the ground, I had scoured the funeral-­home files in the attic, in the basement, and in my office. There hadn't been any sign of her on paper or in ghost form. She hadn't shown up since I'd seen her near her grave.

“Why are you in the past client files?” Charlotte Rae asked. She walked into my office. Her eyes slid over to the old filing cabinet.

“And it's your business?” I asked.

“We are partners.” She reminded me how convenient that word was when she needed it to be.

“You stick with selling the packages and creating new business while I stick with the dead.” I grabbed my phone off the desk.

Charlotte Rae and I had one thing in common—­our last name. In fact, Charlotte was reluctant to go to mortuary school, while I had been chomping at the bit to get there. When we took over Eternal Slumber after Granny retired, Charlotte made it clear she was in charge of the day-­to-­day office duties. She met with families, did the interior decorating—­you know, the clean, don't-­get-­your-­hands-­dirty stuff. The rest was left up to me.

I didn't mind picking up the bodies and making sure the funeral arrangements were in place, everything went smoothly during the ser­vice, the gravesite was prepared for burial, the cemetery stone was ordered—­the list went on and on.

“Now where are you going?” she asked in a cross tone.

“Do you need me for something?” I asked. The information I needed was not in the cabinet, it was in Granny's head.

“I wanted to make sure you were ready for Junior's funeral.”

“Have I ever not been ready?” I asked. There was some reason she was keeping tabs on me, and I wasn't sure what it was.

Charlotte Rae never came into my office. And she never asked where I was going, nor had she ever cared.

“Maybe we can walk down to Higher Grounds Café.” She faked a yawn. “I could use an afternoon cup of pick-­me-­up.”

“Nah.” I shooed her off and cha-­chaed past her, almost knocking into John Howard Lloyd. “Hey, John Howard.”

“Afternoon, Emma Lee. Umm . . .” He stalled and looked between me and Charlotte Rae. “Can I have a word with you, ma'am?”

“Sure.” I checked the time on my phone. I wanted to get over to Sleepy Hollow Inn to get some answers about Mamie Sue Preston before the Inn guests got restless and wanted dinner.

“Miss Charlotte.” John Howard nodded his unruly head of hair and walked past her before she scampered away.

“Thank you,” I said for making Charlotte Rae scurry away. She wasn't good with working with the salt-­of-­the-­earth employees at Eternal Slumber.

“For what, ma'am?” John Howard tucked his dirt-­stained fingers in the bib of his overalls.

“Nothing.” I gestured for him to sit down in one of the chairs in front of my desk.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

“Well . . .” he stalled. “I hate to ask, but—­”

“I know, I know,” I interrupted. I ran my hands down my dull brown hair and tucked a strand behind my ear. “You do deserve a raise. I know it's hard to be the only employee who digs the graves. Plus you do all the landscaping, which looks great.”

I ripped a piece of paper out of the notebook and grabbed a pen. I scribbled a number on the paper.

“How about this?” I pushed the paper to the edge of the desk.

He eased up on the chair and took a look.

“That's mighty nice of you, Emma Lee.” He folded his hands and sat back. “But O'Dell and Bea Allen Burns—­”

“Are you telling me that Burns Funeral is already trying to steal you away from me?” I swear smoke was coming out of my ears.

John Howard Lloyd had come to town years ago, needing a job. Granny had given him one with no questions asked. Luckily, he stayed on when Charlotte Rae and I took over. He was the gravedigger and groundskeeper of the funeral home. I'd had no idea that my competitor, Burns Funeral, was trying to steal him away from me.

“Isn't it enough O'Dell just beat Granny in the mayoral election?” I spat. “Since his sister came back to town and started running the funeral home, I'll bet she's after all my employees.”

I made a quick mental note to check on the status of all the staff at Eternal Slumber and make sure they were happy with their jobs. Bea Allen Burns hadn't lived in Sleepy Hollow for years. Now that her brother, O'Dell, was the newly elected mayor, she'd decided to stay and run the funeral home while he ran the city.

“Those Burns are not going to take over all of Sleepy Hollow.” I grabbed the paper, scribbled out the number and wrote a larger number. “This is it. I can't offer any more money.”

I walked around and handed John Howard the piece of paper.

“Golly, Emma Lee.” His eyes grew, and he gulped. “I wasn't expecting this. Thank you.”

“Good. That's settled.” I walked toward the door. “I have to get going. I've got to go see Granny at the Inn.”

“But Emma Lee.” John Howard stopped me again. “This is a nice raise and I appreciate it, but that's not what I came in here for.”

“It's not?” I was a little confused.

“No, ma'am.” He slipped the piece of paper in the front pocket of his overalls. “I was just wanting to know if you'd be interested in sponsoring me and a few fellows for the new men's softball league they got going over at the old Softball Junction field.”

“Sponsor?” I asked.

“Well, Burns Funeral is going to sponsor a team, and Artie's Meat and Deli is going to sponsor some fellas. And the raise is much appreciated.” He nodded his head. “But we need someone to sponsor us and provide us with things like shirts and stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” I questioned. How was I going to tell Charlotte Rae about the raise—­big money—­I just spent on keeping John Howard, when he wasn't even planning on leaving?

“Oh goodie!” Mamie Sue appeared. She twirled around with her hands clasped in front of her and smiled. Having no teeth didn't seem to bother her at all. “I loved going to those games! Did you say Softball Junction?”

I had to ignore her so John Howard wouldn't think I was crazy.

“Like gloves, shoes, shirts, balls and fees.” He shrugged. “That sort of stuff.”

“And Burns is going to have a team?” I asked.

“Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd,” Mamie Sue sang off-­key as loud as she could. She swayed her cane in the air. “Mmm . . .” She licked her lips. “I love peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Especially those little toys that come in the box. Take me out to the ball game,” she sang as loud as she could, placing her hand over her heart. Her pillbox hat shifted slightly to the side. She quickly pushed it back in place.

“Yes, ma'am,” he confirmed.

“Okay!” I screamed over Mamie Sue. “Eternal Slumber will sponsor the team. And I'm going to see if Jack Henry wants to play!”

John Howard's eye squinted. He put his finger in his ear and wiggled it.

I had a plan.

“If Burns thinks they are going to beat us on the softball field, they have another thing coming to them!”

Jack Henry had played high school baseball and was pretty good at it. He would be Eternal Slumber's secret weapon against Burns Funeral.

“What is all this screaming about?” Charlotte stormed down the hall and looked into my office.

“Play ball!” Mamie yelled. She swung her cane and pretended to hit an imaginary ball. “Home run!”

I busted in a hysterical fit of laughter.

Both Charlotte Rae and John Howard were staring at me with a slight, watchful hesitation.

“Was I yelling?” I asked in a hushed voice. I got myself together and walked over to the door. “I was checking out the acoustics in here. It's for Junior's funeral tonight. Sometimes it can get loud in here with so many ­people, and I think we are going to have a big crowd tonight.”

Junior Mullins had been the oldest citizen of Sleepy Hollow. He had spent the last part of his life in the nursing home. I was positive the town was going to send him off in style.

“Oh.” Charlotte Rae's eyes narrowed before she spun around on the balls of her feet and darted off down the hall.

“So,” I whispered and glanced down the hall to make sure Charlotte was back in her office, “is it okay for Jack Henry to join the team?”

“Sure thing, Emma Lee.” John Howard walked out of my office with me. “So I can tell the boys you agreed to sponsoring us?”

“Yes, you can.” I smiled. There was no way I wasn't going to, even if I had to pay for it out of my own money.

I walked down the hall toward the front of the funeral home and into the vestibule. Velvet curtains hung from each window. I fluffed each one out when I walked by. Dust shot out in clouds.

“Charlotte?” I hollered out. “How long has it been since you cleaned the curtains?”

The click of her heels getting closer made my heart beat a little faster. She peeked her head out of her office door.

“I never agreed to clean them.” She drew back. Her lashes batted.

“It's part of your duties to keep the funeral home appealing.” I smacked the curtain, and more dust came out. “Yuck.”

“You can always call Dixie.” Mamie appeared in the chair next to the pedestal where the memorial cards for Junior were located. “I have no idea what she is doing now that I'm dead. Poor Dixie. I hated leaving her. Mind you, it
was
against my will. That is why I'm still here. Remember?” She planted her cane on the hardwood floor and danced a jig around it.

“Emma Lee.” Charlotte snapped her finger in my face. “I swear. Just when I think you are normal, you turn around and go into la-­la land. Plus you were just screaming at the top of your lungs. Are you sure you're feeling okay?”

“I'm fine,” I assured her.

“I'm not.” Mamie Sue gummed and licked her lips. “I told you to find my teeth. Did you? There is no way I can go to a ball game like this.” She smacked her lips together. A hollow sound came out.

I giggled.

“I'm fine,” I said again to Charlotte Rae. “I'll get the cleaning taken care of before the ser­vice tonight if you are
so
busy.”

As weird as it sounded, funerals were a big deal in the South. A big send-­off where everyone in town showed up.

In fact, funerals around these parts were bigger than weddings. Women spent hours in the kitchen making food for the after-­ser­vice. It was sort of a competition to see who made what and whose dish was best. I'd get several calls leading up to the day of a funeral from the Auxiliary women telling me what they were bringing so it wasn't duplicated. I had to keep notes on who was bringing what dish. It was a big no-­no to have two of the same food item.

Beulah Paige Bellefry had already called to let me know she had made a new recipe that everyone was going to die for. I was excited to see what it was and how everyone was going to react to it. Especially the Auxiliary women.

The Auxiliary women were a bunch of local women with nothing to do but sit around in their fancy clothes and gossip. Beulah Paige was in charge of them and whom they invited to become a member. One time, they extended me an invitation, but it was quickly recanted after I was diagnosed with the Funeral Trauma.

“Everything is great.” I opened the front door of the funeral home and didn't bother saying good-­bye to Charlotte Rae before I slammed the door behind me.