beyond the grave 03 - a ghostly demise (20 page)
Read beyond the grave 03 - a ghostly demise Online
Authors: tonya kappes
Granny nearly fell out of a chair in the row behind the squeaky chair, straining to see O’Dell Burns walking through the crowd. Everyone extended a hand of congratulations. Graciously, he nodded and made sure not to take away from the funeral.
I excused myself from Leotta and made my way through the crowd.
“I want to ask a favor from the mayor,” I said, and took him to the side.
“Sure, Emma Lee.” He rubbed his hands together. “What can I do for you?”
It was the opening I needed to help complete Cephus’s journey to the other side.
M
y heart warmed as we made our way through town as the citizens who didn’t know about or come to the burial pulled their cars to the side of the road out of respect for Cephus.
No matter how much I complained about the small town, the politics and the gossip, it was times in need that made me most proud to live here. No matter what your differences, everyone pulled together to become a strong community.
I did a couple of laps around the square in the hearse before I pulled into the cemetery. The hearse wormed its way around the curvy roads. Trees lined the road, creating a nice shady canopy over the procession to Cephus’s final resting place.
John Howard Lloyd sat on the digger; the claw covered in fresh earth.
“Guess that’s where I’m goin’.” Sadness dripped out of Cephus’s mouth.
He looked out the hearse’s back window. The car behind us was the family car, in which Leotta and Mary Anna were being driven by Charlotte Rae.
“I guess Vernon Baxter can take care of my Leotta.” Cephus pointed to me. “But when she comes to join me on the other side, she’s all mine. Forever.”
“Forever,” I confirmed, and put the hearse in
PARK
.
This was the second hardest part about being a Betweener. The first was accepting I had a new client who had been murdered. The second was saying good-bye.
I waited in the hearse while John Howard did his thing. He opened the back of the hearse door, had the pallbearers line up and hit the button to start the automatic wheels to set the coffin in motion for them to pick up.
Everyone gathered under the tent and took a seat in one of the fold-up chairs. The pallbearers placed the coffin on the display table in front of the tent.
O’Dell Burns showed up right on time to make good on my favor. Cephus watched as he continued to kneel beside Leotta. It was heartwarming how he tried to console her. Mary Anna snuggled Leotta as they both cried.
I took the brown bag from O’Dell and peeked inside. I handed the bag back to him.
“Mayor Burns has been so gracious to overlook our ‘dry county’ law this one hour we have together to say our good-byes to Cephus Hardy.” As I spoke, O’Dell handed out cans of ice-cold Stroh’s to the mourners. “I’d like to send Cephus off with a good ice-cold Stroh’s.” I deliberately left off the “h.” I held my can in the air. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” the crowd erupted.
The sound of the cans opening sounded like little pops of firecrackers.
“Thank you, Emma Lee.” Cephus went around the crowd, taking big sniffs from everyone with a can.
He took one long last whiff from Leotta before he was gone.
Ding, ding, ding.
No one else seemed to hear the ringing of a bell. Maybe it was Cephus telling me he made it to the other side, like the quote in the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life
.
Ding, ding, ding.
The second set of bells ringing got my attention. I glanced over the crowd and into the old section of the cemetery.
Ding, ding, ding.
There was a bell on an old stone that was blowing in the wind. Only for me, the dings were too deliberate to be the wind.
The bell was attached to a string that hung down the stone.
While everyone said their final good-byes to Cephus, I walked over to the old stone and noticed that the taut string ran into the ground.
I stepped back and looked at the stone. The chiseled words read
I told you I was sick. Mamie Sue Preston,
scrolled in fancy lettering.
Ding, ding, ding.
I looked at the bell. An older, short woman, with a short gray bob that was neatly combed under a small pillbox hat and wearing a pale green skirt suit, was doing her best to sit ladylike on the stone, with one leg crossed over the other. Her fingernail tapped the bell, causing it to ding.
I couldn’t help but notice the large diamond on her finger and the strand of pearls around her neck and 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 grinned, not a tooth in her head, but a cane in her hand. “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 tap-danced over her own grave.
“Don’t do that. It’s bad luck,” I repeated another Southern phrase I had heard all my life.
“Honey, my luck couldn’t get any worse than it already is.” Her face was drawn. Her green eyes set. Her jaw tensed. “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 adjusted the pillbox hat on her head. “I’m the wealthiest woman in town, 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?
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D
ing, ding, ding
.
The ornamental bell on an old cemetery headstone rang out. No one was touching it. No wind or breeze.
The string attached to the top of the bell hung down the stone, disappearing into the ground. To the naked eye it would seem as though the bell dinged from natural causes, like 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. Mamie Sue Preston,
were scrolled in fancy lettering. Her date of death was a few years before I had taken 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. An older, petite woman, with a short gray bob neatly combed under a small pillbox hat and wearing a pale green skirt suit, was doing her best to sit ladylike on the stone, with one leg crossed over the other. 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 giddyup.
“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 In Betweener clients?
I knew exactly what she meant when she said I needed to help 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.” Granny waved a handkerchief in the air and bolted 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, making 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 in 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 Sue’s lips pursed suspiciously when she looked at Granny. Next thing I knew, Mamie Sue was sitting on her stone, legs crossed, tapping the bell.
Ding, ding, ding.
“We have a goner who needs help!” Mamie Sue 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 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, aka 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 Sue 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.
T
ONYA KAPPES has written more than fifteen novels and four novellas, all of which have graced numerous bestseller lists, including
USA Today
. Best known for stories charged with emotion and humor and filled with flawed characters, her novels have garnered reader praise and glowing critical reviews. She lives with her husband, two very spoiled schnauzers, and one ex-stray cat in northern Kentucky. Now that her boys are teenagers, Tonya writes full-time but can be found at all of her guys’ high-school games with a pencil and paper in hand. Come on over and FAN Tonya on Goodreads.
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