A Ghostly Murder (8 page)

“I needed to know some information about Mamie Sue Preston.” I prepared myself for what was coming next.

“Who?” He shook his head. Disappointment lay deep on his face.

“Mamie Sue Preston,” I whispered and looked down at my hands. I picked at my fingernails. “She was murdered.”

 

Chapter 13

I
figured out the quickest way to get rid of Jo Francis Ross. Tell Jack Henry someone was murdered.

“How long have you been helping her?” Jack Henry's jaw muscles were as tight as his fingers gripping the steering wheel.

“A few days.” I didn't look at him.

I kept my focus out the window. The trees and background were blurred; Jack Henry was going fast.

“Please slow down,” I suggested.

“I truly can't believe you have been investigating a murder on your own.” He beat the wheel with the palm of his hand. “Do you know how dangerous this is? You could cross the wrong person and they wouldn't have any problem killing you. Then what would I do?”

“You would take the big job you were offered that you didn't tell me about.”

The silence in the car made my arm hairs stand on end.

“You didn't think I heard that part?” I asked. Anger began to swell in me. “And that your mom thinks I'm holding you back from your lifelong dream of being a state trooper? How could you keep this from me?” It was like he opened up a can of worms, because I couldn't stop my mouth. “Talk about feeling stupid. You are my boyfriend! This is a big opportunity for you. How do you expect me to be able to accept you not taking a big job because of me? It's not like we wouldn't see each other!” I screamed at him.

“We wouldn't see each other.” The muscles in his forearm tensed, along with the rest of his body. He kept his eyes on the road. “It's a federal job with an undercover task force in Indiana.”

My jaw dropped along with my heart. My brows rose. My mouth went dry. I felt like I had swallowed a spoonful of sand.

“Emma Lee.” He threw the cruiser in park and turned toward me.

After I realized we were back at the funeral home, I jumped out.

“Emma!” he called after me.

I didn't turn around. I needed time to myself. I couldn't believe he was offered a big job and didn't tell me about it. By the conversation with his mom, I could tell he was still considering it.

“Emma Lee, let's talk about this!” he yelled louder.

I slammed the door of the funeral home. That was as far as I got. I pulled back the curtain on the window next to the door and watched Jack Henry. I couldn't believe he was contemplating whether or not to come in. I prayed he didn't. I had been humiliated enough tonight. Not only had I made a fool out of myself with the dog, I'd had no idea Jack Henry had been offered a big undercover job. My ego was bruised, and I needed time to think about how I was going to do the right thing. Let him go.

The idea of it brought tears to my eyes. Most teenage girls had posters of hot Hollywood celebrities on their walls. Not me. Every year I was in high school, I saved my allowance and bought two yearbooks. I used one to cut out all the photos of Jack Henry and plaster them on my wall. I used the other for what few friends I had to sign, trying to fit in and not be the “creepy funeral-­home girl.”

I wasn't one who needed to be made over, nor did I want him to beg me to talk to him. He knew me. He knew I needed time. Granted, I would be ready to talk to him tomorrow, but for tonight, I wanted to be alone.

“That boy loves you.” Mamie Sue Preston stood behind me, looking over my shoulder.

In silence we watched the cruiser headlights pull out of Eternal Slumber's driveway.

“Come on.” I walked back to my efficiency.

It was time I took care of Mamie Sue. Jack Henry might have left for the night, but tomorrow he'd be all over me about my new Betweener client and what I knew.

It was funny how my relationship with Jack Henry had started when I'd gone to him about my first Betweener client. We were able to separate business from pleasure. I was sure tomorrow he would show up at my door in business mode.

I grabbed the Baggie with Mamie's teeth, along with the hearse keys. I had a date with a gravestone.

My daddy always told me to keep an emergency kit in the back of the hearse. When he and Mom moved to Florida, he gave me the kit, since I was taking over his part of the job. Mom had had the cushy job like Charlotte Rae.

My kit included a flashlight, extra batteries, hammer, screwdriver, blanket, jumper cables, tire gauge, bottled water, and a bag of trail mix, which had to be outdated by now.

The tools might seem strange, but you never know when a casket decides not to work properly or there might be a screw loose that needs to be tightened. Sounds strange, but, like everything in life, shit happens.

The Sleepy Hollow cemetery was locked up at night. We didn't have a caretaker who lived on the grounds, so it would be easy to slip in even if I wasn't in a hearse. Thankfully I had a key to the gate for emergency purposes. I was one of three who had a key. The city, O'Dell Burns and me. At times it was good to be an undertaker, and now was one of them.

I got the gate open and pulled in. I got back out to lock the gate back up. I didn't want any unwanted visitors in there, nor did I want someone to see the gate was open and call the police.

The headstones lined both sides of the road. Several different roads forked off the main one, but I kept going straight because Mamie was in the old section of the cemetery.

She sat still in the passenger seat with her hands neatly folded in her lap.

“You know . . .” She looked out the window. Her voice was almost a whisper. “. . . I'm not sure why anyone would want to kill me. I never bothered a soul. I was a pillar of the community.”

“I'm sorry. ­People do mean things for no reason.” I still didn't have a clear picture of a motive unless it was money. “Why did you leave money to the church?”

“Why not?” she asked back.

“I have never seen them do anything to acknowledge it,” I said.

“Maybe I didn't want it to be acknowledged. Maybe they don't know it was me.” She said a lot without saying a lot.

“Anonymous?” I asked.

“You can say that.” She pulled back her shoulders and straightened up a little when we got to her stone. “Like I told you earlier, it was mine to do with what I wanted.”

It was refreshing to know Mamie donated a large sum of money to the church. Granny was wrong about Mamie Sue. But I wasn't about to tell Granny that.

I grabbed the Baggie with Mamie's teeth in it and my bag of tricks from the back of the hearse and walked over to her stone. She was propped back on top with her legs crossed, like she was when I first saw her.

“I do love this bell.” She flicked it a few times with her finger.

The sun had set and dusk was upon us, making it difficult to see the small hole where the bell string disappeared. I took the flashlight out of the bag and shone it on the hole.

“You know.” Mamie paused and hopped off the stone. She ran her palm over the top of her name. “It's strange seeing my grave.”

“I'm sorry.” I had a strange feeling I needed to tell her how sorry I was she was murdered and how no one ever deserved to be killed.

“Enough about that.” She waved her bony hands in the air. “Get to my teeth.”

“Gross.” My nose curled when I took the teeth out of the bag. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

I didn't know what happened to the dead once I got them six feet under, and I didn't care. Evidently they took the items in their casket with them to the other side.

“Positive.” She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Now, get them in that hole.” She instructed me, pointing to the dime-­sized hole.

“The hole is tiny.” I manipulated the end of the teeth in the opening. The teeth were much larger than the hole. “Does this hole go all the way into your casket?”

Suddenly I felt like I should have done more research on this type of casket setup.

“The hole into the casket is bigger.” She did a shimmy shake. “All sorts of bugs can get in there, but I didn't care as long as I had that bell.”

She shooed me to continue to try to get the teeth in the hole. No matter how many times I jabbed, turned, and thought, the teeth weren't going to fit.

“Use your hammer to make the hole bigger and wiggle them in.” Mamie swung her legs and tapped the kit with her cane.

The hammer wasn't going to work because I would tear up the stone, then I'd get in trouble for messing with a corpse, which was illegal. I could use the screwdriver.

I put the tip of the screwdriver on the edge of the marble hole and slowly chiseled the hole until it was big enough to get the tip of the teeth in it. I wiggled the teeth until they finally dropped entirely underground.

“We did it!” Excitement filled me, and I looked up at Mamie.

“We sure did.” She smiled with the biggest and brightest teeth I had ever seen on a ghost. “Aren't they gorgeous?” She moved her head side to side with her mouth wide open. “I paid good money for these babies.”

“You look beautiful.” I smiled.

“Oh, ah, oh, ah.” She opened her mouth and closed it several times, letting out an ominous sound.

Her hands pulled and tugged on the skin on her neck as though she was stretching it, then she put her fingers on her cheeks and moved them around in a circular motion, as if she were exercising her face.

“It's a bitch getting old and getting saggy skin.” She opened her mouth really wide and closed it a ­couple times. “I spent a lot of money on beauty products to keep this skin tight.”

The moon decided to come out. It shone down like a spotlight. I walked over to Mamie and took a good look at her.

“You look great as a ghost.” I noticed she had much tighter skin than most women her age.

“I could use my face cream.” Her eyes slid to me.

“Forget it.” I shook my head and gathered my kit. “I got your teeth in there, I'm not putting facial cream down there.”

The entire way back to the funeral home, I couldn't help but smile. The only thing I could see in the dark was Mamie Sue Preston's teeth from her smiling the entire way home.

My argument with Jack Henry played over in my head, making it hard for me to even think about going to sleep that night. Mamie Sue disappeared, and I could only imagine she was enjoying having her teeth back in her mouth. It was only ten o'clock. Instead of trying to force myself to go to sleep, I decided to write down the pieces of Mamie's life and how they fit together, in order to help me find her killer.

I wrote, “Mamie Sue Preston was the wealthiest woman in Sleepy Hollow. How did she get her money? She died a virgin. She had a maid, Dixie Dunn, who she left her estate to. Why would she leave her big house to her maid?”

“Dixie Dunn.” I tapped the name with my pencil. “Dixie Dunn holds the answers.”

It seemed Dixie Dunn had had the most to gain from Mamie Sue dying, so I stuck her on the top of my list.

I glanced at the clock. It wasn't good manners to make social calls at ten o'clock at night, but who said I had good manners?

The full moon hung high on my way back to Mamie's fancy neighborhood. I had never been to Beulah's home, and the address on the Auxiliary invitation was not too far from Mamie's mansion.

Beulah Paige's house was dark. I didn't see her fancy red Cadillac in her driveway, though it was probably in her detached garage, which was a mini version of her house. Mini, meaning it was as big as Eternal Slumber.

The front porch light flipped on after I beat on the door for a few minutes.

“Who is here at this hour?” Beulah's voice asked but the face didn't match Beulah's. “Emma Lee, do you know what time it is?”

“What happened to your face?” My eyes squinted. Maybe it was the lighting making her face so white. “Did you lose your tan?”

Beulah Paige was the Queen of Fake. Fake smile, fake niceness, fake eyelashes, and fake tan.

“What do you want?” she asked.
Want
came out as “wunt” with her disgusted tone of voice.

She shifted. Her black silk robe with the leopard fur around the edges hiked up on her full hips, lifting it above her ankles. In true Beulah fashion, she had on low-­heeled slippers with a leopard puff on the top.

“I want to know what is on your face,” I said.

She was scary-­looking. The heavy white cream she was wearing looked like the same stuff Granny made Momma smear on my nose when we went to the swimming pool when I was a kid. Up against Beulah's red hair, it made her look like a clown. I didn't like clowns.

“It's my night cream to keep the wrinkles at bay.” She huffed and held the door tight against her body. “Go home. I need my beauty sleep. I will see you here tomorrow night. Not that I'm looking forward to it.”

She went to shut the door. I put my hand on it to stop it.

“I wanted to ask you a ­couple of questions about Dixie.” I put my toe on the bottom of the door so she couldn't slam it in my face.

“What on earth do you want to know at ten o'clock at night?” she asked.

“Who did she work for before?” I asked.

“I don't know or care.” She blinked her black lashes. They were so long that she blinked cream right on them. “Good night.”

She tried to shut the door, and we played the tango game, where I stopped her.

“Is she a business, or does she just work for herself?” I asked.

Beulah let out a big sigh. “Emma Lee, I'm tired. Don't mistake my accent for ignorance. Why are you here?”

“Charlotte Rae is on my ass about getting a person who can clean, and when I met Dixie at Junior's funeral, I thought she might have some friends or work for some company I can call.” This lying stuff was getting easier and easier.

“I pay her under the table. The only thing I know is she shows up at seven in the morning and leaves around seven at night.” Her foot slid out from underneath her robe. Gently she tapped it on the tile floor. “I guess I could find out, because your sister is definitely in need of an attitude adjustment.”