beyond the grave 03 - a ghostly demise (5 page)

“It’s sort of like a sleeper hold but Daddy and Teddy came up with a spin to it.” She dropped her arms, letting me out of her grip. “Now it’s a move—the Teddy Bear Hold.”

“Really?” I was impressed.

“Daddy would love that.” She took a deep inhale.

That was pretty impressive. Not many people can say something was named after them. Not anyone I knew.

“Morning, ladies.” Vernon Baxter was hard at work on a client in the basement.

Vernon was a stately-looking older man with white hair and a sprinkle of pepper. His steel-blue eyes and debonair good looks reminded me of old Hollywood. I felt like I was standing between Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant.

He was a retired doctor who performed all the autopsies in Sleepy Hollow. He used Eternal Slumber as his office. We had recently acquired the latest equipment and technology in the mortuary business when the town council voted to use some of the extra tax money to fund the upgrade. Things like the latest in DNA equipment to help the police solve crimes and some more real fancy technology that I didn’t even try to understand but Vernon did.

“How’s it going?” I asked Vernon about his latest victim.

“Everything’s as it seems.” He smiled and continued looking around the body lying on the cold, metal table.

I try not to look at the clients when they are not dressed and without full makeup. That did give me the heebie-jeebies. You’d think a ghost would freak me out, but they didn’t. Their appearance was just like I remembered them. And that was
a-okay
with me.

“What are you two doing?” He glanced up.

I got a chill when I noticed the bone saw in his hand. The handle of the saw looked like the butt of a gun and the saw part was just that.

“I forgot these.” Mary Anna stood next to her makeup station and picked up her scissors. “My best ones.”

“That’s a little gross.” I shivered at the thought. “Do your clients know that?”

“Nope. Dead or living, neither know.” She laughed so loud, I held on to the table just in case she did wake the dead and they decided to visit me.

“Say, I hear Bea Allen is in town and staying with Leotta,” Vernon said.

He didn’t look up as he hacked away on something. I didn’t know what it was he was sawing, but I could hear it.

“You know Momma.” Mary Anna’s tone caught my attention. “She always did have a good friend in Bea Allen. Especially when you four used to double-date.”

Did Vernon Baxter know Leotta? I was on high alert to help get Cephus to the other side. Every single conversation was on my radar. No stone unturned was my Betweener motto.

Double date? As far as I knew, Vernon Baxter had been a bachelor all his life, and to my knowledge, he hadn’t been dating. Evidently not. I took my cell out of my pocket and typed in a note to check on this double-date thing and if Vernon dated Bea Allen. Not that dating Bea Allen would contribute to finding out who killed Cephus, but it was good gossip to talk to Granny about. Any gossip about the O’Dells was good gossip. Especially here during election time.

Cephus walked over to Vernon. He raised his hand and scratched his chin.

“Vernon Baxter killed me!” Cephus protested, and took a good swing at Vernon.

Not only did my mouth drop, so did my cell phone.

“Are you okay?” Vernon jumped around and rubbed his chin as if he could feel the sting of the punch from Cephus’s fist.

I swooped down and picked it up. Luckily, it didn’t shatter. I put it back in my pocket and took a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” I asked Vernon, who was still rubbing his chin.

“Suddenly my mouth hurts.” He jutted his jaw backward, forward, side to side.

“Earache. I always get jaw pain when I’m getting an earache.” Mary Anna insisted on being the doctor in his diagnosis.

“True,” he mumbled while rotating his bottom lip. “I should probably stop by Doc Clyde’s office.”

“Next time I’m really gonna hurt ya!” Cephus danced on his toes with his fists loosely tucked with his thumb and his pinky finger sticking out, jabbing in the air.

“Look at the time.” Mary Anna checked out her gold watch with the glittery rhinestones. Mary Anna was always sparkly. “I’m going to be late. I had to double-book a couple perms today since I had a stylist quit on me. Said she’d make more money at a real spa.” Mary Anna rolled her eyes and batted her fake lashes. “Real spa. Nothing more real than what I got. Plus you learn a lot.” She wiggled her perfectly waxed brows. “If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I know.” I walked out with her but not without glancing back at Vernon.

Cephus was gone again. Which was better. I could ask Mary Anna a few more questions without him interrupting. Plus, I might be able to go back down and fiddle around the freezer so Vernon could talk to me.

“Vernon and Bea Allen, huh?” I slid the question between the silence and pushed the elevator key.

“Momma always said they were a strange pair.” She gestured with the scissors in her hand.

“How so?”

“Did you see her? Frizzy hair and shit.” Mary Anna did spirit fingers around the top of her head. “I was dying to get my hands in that hair of hers. I can do wonders with frizz. You’ve seen Hettie Bell. I got her crazy hair under control.”

She was right. When Hettie Bell came to town, she was gothic-looking, with some big frizzy hair. Eventually, she cleaned her act up and now she has that great yoga studio. She claims she’s making Sleepy Hollow Zen, one resident at a time. I’ve yet to see any results.

“In fact, when I was a kid, Teddy had all that hair just like Daddy.” She reminded me of Teddy and the questions I needed answered.

“Oh, yeah!” I had forgotten all about his crazy hair. I’d never seen a white boy with an Afro.

“Well, I used to pin him down and pretend it was Bea Allen’s. I swear that was when I decided to become a hairdresser.” She elbowed me right as the elevator door opened into the vestibule. “No way could I pin that boy down now. I can’t wait for you to see him.”

“Are you having a get-together?” I wanted to make sure I did see him.

“We will be over at the carnival tomorrow night. You going?” she asked.

“Good morning.” Charlotte Rae darted past us and down the hall, disappearing into her office without even waiting for our response.

“Good to see you too.” Mary Anna’s nose curled. “Anyway, you going?”

“Yes. Of course. Jack Henry and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I waved her off and shut the door behind her.

I took my phone out of my pocket and texted Jack Henry.

How is the goat situation? Working on the case I told you about earlier.

Quickly he texted back:
Leave it to the police, Emma Lee!

I responded:
You worry about the living and the goats. I’ll worry about the dead!

I dipped my head into Charlotte Rae’s office to see what her hurry was. Not that I wasn’t in a hurry. I was. I needed to get on some of these leads to help Cephus to the other side, starting with figuring out who did him in and where they put him.

“What’s the hurry?” I asked her when I opened up the door.

She stood by the window with her back to me. Her long legs looked much longer in her black skirt suit and black heels. Her long red hair draped down her back in the most beautiful curls. She was blessed with Grandpa Raines’s genes and Granny’s pretty hair. I was cursed with Granny’s side of the family. Short and average, but had the Raines’s dull brown hair.

Charlotte was good at running the financial side of the funeral-home business. Like consoling the family, helping them pick out the casket, giving them the options on funerals and paying the funeral-home bills.

I was good at making sure the arrangements ran smooth and the burial was flawless.

“I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that sign out front.” Slowly she turned around. An angry gaze rose on her face. “Granny has taken it a bit too far this time. People aren’t going to vote for her if she’s not going to take this seriously.”

“It’s just a sign.” I rolled my eyes. “You can’t go around forgetting where it is that you come from now that you live in the next town over and in that big house.”

When Granny gave us the funeral home, Charlotte refused to live here like we had all our life. I stayed. It was perfect for me. How many people could say that they literally rolled out of bed for work?

Not Charlotte. She had wanted to get out of Sleepy Hollow all her life. Now she’s just partly out.

“Little sign?” Her voice rose and she pointed out the window. I followed her long, thin fingers down to her perfectly-pink-painted nails to the outside world. “Did you see it,
Emma Lee
?”

“Oh how bad can it be?” I asked, and left her office. I was going to go outside and see it for myself.

“Oh. My. God.” It was the second time my mouth dropped today.

The sign was
that bad
and
that big
. It took up the entire front yard. I walked down the front steps of the porch and stepped over a few, like ten, extension cords that were all plugged into one another, then in the outside outlet. I made my way around to the front.

VOTE FOR ZULA FAE RAINES PAYNE
flashed in big red lightbulbs. The backdrop was a picture of the United States flag and she had a motto scrolled along the bottom.

You let me take care of your loved ones, let me take care of you!

“What’s wrong?” John Howard’s wrinkles on his forehead creased. “You said in the middle.”

Chapter 6

G
ranny?” I stomped up the steps of the Sleepy Hollow Inn. “Granny!”

After seeing the sign, I had jumped in the hearse and driven around the square to the Inn. Normally I’d just run across the square, but the carnies were setting up for the carnival and I didn’t feel like running around them.

I let the screen door slam behind me when I walked into the Inn. A couple of guests were in the room on the right, eating some of the hors d’oeuvres and drinking her famous sweet tea.

Their heads turned at the sound of the screen door’s smacking the frame.

Granny rushed out of the kitchen and down the hall, wiping her hands on her apron.

“What in the world is wrong with you today?” She grabbed me by the arm and jerked me toward the kitchen. “First you go all nuts at Artie’s and now you are screaming your way into the Inn.”

“Did you see the sign you had John Howard put up in the yard of the funeral home?” I pointed over my shoulder. Granny just kept dragging me.

Once we got into the kitchen she flung me in front of her, letting go.

“Emma Lee, if you don’t hide that crazy, Doc Clyde is going to admit you.” She shook her finger at me. “I asked you if I could put the sign in the yard and you said yes. Did you forget it already? It was only about an hour ago.”

“Granny.” I rubbed my arm. Even though I was an adult, she didn’t mind taking over when my parents up and retired. Not missing a beat to tell me when I was wrong. “I said a sign. Not a billboard.”

The smell of fresh-baked bread filtered through the air, along with something a little sugary.

“Oh, honey. That was the smallest size. I could’ve gone bigger.” She snapped her fingers. “When your grandfather bought the land for Eternal Slumber, we had an option to buy the land Pose and Relax is on. I wish we had, but that Mamie Sue was a little stingy.”

“Who?” I had never even heard of this Mamie Sue.

“Mamie Sue Preston.” Granny waved her hand and did the sign of the cross like she was Catholic. We weren’t. Not a Catholic church in town.

“Never mind her, she’s dead. But if I did own the land where Pose and Relax is, my sign would’ve been a lot bigger than the little one that’s on the lawn now.”

“You are telling me that you knew it was that big? Because if you are, you are going to have to answer to Charlotte. She’s freaking out,” I said. “Gross.” My nose curled when I saw the bowl full of some sort of barley, berries, peas and some other sort of oats. “I hope you aren’t serving that for breakfast.”

Granny ignored me and poured me a big glass of tea and set it on the table.

“Have a seat.” She gestured and walked over to the oven. She used the lime-green oven mitts to pull something out of the oven. With the large steel spatula, she scooped up her homemade oatmeal cookies and arranged them on a pretty china plate with little flowers around the edges. “Here.”

She put one in front of me.

“You aren’t going to win this one with an oatmeal cookie.” I lifted my chin in the air, trying not to smell the deliciousness that was put in front of me.

“Fine.” She plunked another one down from the plate in her hand. “What about two?”

She didn’t wait for my answer before she headed out the door with the smell trailing behind her.

I gobbled them up and poured a second glass of tea before she made it back.

“Better now?” Granny lifted her brow, a slight grin tipping the edges of her lips.

“You always knew how to bribe me.” I took another gulp of tea to clear my palate. “Seriously. All the flashing lights? And the motto? I took care of your loved ones, let me take care of you?”

“It’s a good one, right.” Granny was proud of her play on words. “Me and the Auxiliary gals came up with all sorts of mottos.”

“I’m sure you did.” I took another long sip. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the whole sign thingy. “Don’t you think the sign is a bit much?”

“Is the Statue of Liberty too much? What about Mount Rushmore? Is that too much?” Her face contorted, flushed as red as her hair.

“Those are icons of the United States.”

“I’m an icon in Sleepy Hollow.” She straightened herself up. “I had the idea to open the caves for tourism. I alone turned this downward-spiraling economy into one of the thriving cities in Kentucky. What has O’Dell done? He didn’t do nothing. In fact, he voted against my proposal of opening the caves.” She opened the junk drawer. Items spilled out onto the floor as she searched around, finally pulling out a pen and paper. “I need to write that down. I forgot all about that.”