CHAPTER TWO
There were those who said Last Stop, Texas, should’ve been named Pass On Through.
The town had been founded back in 1850, at the height of the Wild West, as men on horseback made an impressive picture driving cattle straight through the middle of town to much fanfare. They’d let the animals stop and drink out of the watering hole on the Larson property, and sleep in the grassy fields under the stars. It was their last stop until the Oklahoma border.
It was a short-lived claim to fame, as the railroads came to Fort Worth in 1876, changing the way cattle drives were done. It was just as well, as Mr. Larson’s watering hole had all but dried up about the same time.
From that point on, prosperity had overlooked Last Stop. It was so close to Dallas a person could all but stand in the center of town and throw a nickel at it. And in a cruel twist of fate back in the eighties, when they’d gone to put in the bypass, it had bypassed right by Last Stop.
That had been the last straw for a lot of folks, but the die-hards had stayed—those with the last names of Webb, Coward, Hawkins, Larson, and Jessup—whose ancestors had been the first to be buried in the tiny cemetery. Those five families owned most of everything in Last Stop, including any viable farming land. Others, whose blood didn’t run quite so pure as the town founders’, had also chosen to stay for one reason or another, but they made the commute into the city each day and prayed for cheaper gas prices.
Last Stop wasn’t the prettiest town, and it had never gotten its picture in a magazine for being one of the “cutest small towns in America.” Not like Rose Hill, which was only a half-hour drive on the other side of the Trinity River. In Last Stop, the streets were cobbled and the buildings that lined Main Street were two-stories of plain brown brick that looked like cardboard boxes. The city council had tried to come up with some money to put striped awnings over the walkways, but the taxpayers decided they’d rather save their pennies and just get wet when it rained.
Those who lived in Texas understood how the seasons worked—that summer lasted a minimum of nine months throughout the year, and winter usually visited in the month of January, just long enough for everyone to buy boots and winter gear before having to shove it back in the recesses of their closets come February. Drought was a serious problem from May to September, and playgrounds sat empty as one-hundred-degree days and a sweltering humidity made the outdoors a miserable existence.
It was an endless cycle that kept on year after year, without changing—but Last Stop wasn’t big on change. When it came down to it, people would still spend their Friday nights watching high school football, their Saturday mornings mowing lawns and washing cars, their Sunday mornings at church, and the rest of the days of the week looking for somebody else’s sins to pray about the following Sunday. Last Stop was caught in the past and had no plans of moving toward the future.
Tess Sherman took her life in Last Stop in stride. The name Sherman didn’t mean much around town. In fact, most people raised their brows when the name was mentioned. She wasn’t deaf. She’d heard rumblings about how she thought she was too good for anyone. They said she liked spending more time with the dead than with the living, and she guessed that was at least partially true. There was no need to worry about the dead running off with ten thousand dollars from her savings account or stealing her car. At least not that she’d encountered.
Of course, it was her own mother who kept the gossip mill going. People got their hair cut at the Clip n’ Curl because Theodora was better than Channel 8 when it came to reporting the news. Whether the news was true or not didn’t seem to matter so much. Theodora Sherman wasn’t known for her honesty.
Or for her scruples. After all, it was also Tess’s mother who’d run off with her savings and her car.
She’d flitted in and out of her daughter’s life since she was a child, leaving her with her grandmother when it suited her and popping back into town when she needed money or a new man. Her grandmother liked to say that Theodora would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. Tess hated to break it to her, but a few nails wouldn’t stop Theodora if she had her mind set on having it.
When Tess had moved back home to Last Stop after college, she’d had a mountain of student loan debt, and she couldn’t impose on her grandmother by staying with her. Her grandmother had sacrificed enough over the years, and it was time she got to live her own life without having to worry about anyone else.
So for the past seven years, Tess had lived at the funeral home because she didn’t have to pay rent, and because the funeral home had given her exactly what she’d needed: privacy. After growing up in a house where her mother riffled through her drawers looking for cash or mementos to pawn, it was a relief to know she could buy nice things and not worry about keeping them in a box buried in the rosebushes.
Living at the funeral home should’ve been the perfect solution for her “life plan.” Once she’d paid off her student loans, she’d started setting aside money for a home of her own and for the day when she could either buy the funeral home from George Jessup or move on and open her own place. She wanted something that would last. Something that would be only hers.
About two years ago, Theodora had pretty much sent her life plan spiraling down the toilet. Tess had made the mistake of leaving her online bank account open when someone buzzed at the door. Theodora had been doing hair and makeup on Cleo Clancy in the embalming room, but she must’ve gotten curious when the buzzer had rung and wandered out to see if she could pick up any new gossip.
The open office door and bank information had stopped her in her tracks. Theodora could smell money a mile away, and it hadn’t taken long for her to transfer funds out of Tess’s savings account and into her own. By the time Tess had consoled Cleo’s grieving husband and made it back to her office, her computer was closed and she’d forgotten all about paying her bills, which was why it had been open in the first place.
Theodora hadn’t finished Cleo’s makeover. She’d hightailed it out of Last Stop, straight across the Oklahoma border, until she saw the flashing lights of the casino beckoning her. It had taken just a smidgen longer to lose the ten thousand dollars than it had to steal it. She’d come home three days later without a by-your-leave, asking if Tess had managed to do anything with Cleo’s hair.
That had been the norm in Tess’s life for as long as she could remember. Her irresponsible, scatterbrained, childlike mother was what she was. There’d been no point in filing a police report or sending her mother to jail. Even if her conscience had allowed it, seeing the heartbreak in her grandmother’s eyes would’ve changed her mind. There’d been nothing more she could do than to start over and take more care with hiding her money.
Theodora had a sickness. The thrill of flashing lights and the clang of the machine as dollar signs lined up had always had more of an appeal than choosing to do what was right. Or her only daughter.
Now Tess was finally at a place where she could financially stand on her own, and her savings was growing little by little every month. But her “life plan” had certainly veered off course. And though she hated to admit it, because she took pride in the fact that she was a planner, she was starting to think that Last Stop might not be in her plans after all.
She was the director of the funeral home, but she wasn’t the owner. And as much time and personal investment as she’d given to the place, it would likely never be hers. Even if the new owner wanted to sell, she couldn’t afford to buy her out. The last two years had been the strangest of her life. And it had all started when Eve Winter had purchased the funeral home.
What Tess needed was to pick up and start over—maybe—she thought, biting her lip. The only time she’d lived away from Last Stop was the five years she’d spent at the University of Texas—three for her mortuary science degree and another two for her MBA. Her plan had been to run a funeral home after all, so she figured she needed to know as much about the business side of things as she did about the death side of things. She could go anywhere or do anything, but she didn’t want to be someone’s employee forever. That she knew for certain.
She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure how she’d ended up in the mortuary science program. She’d gone to college with most of her basics already taken, so she’d had a semester to experiment and try to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Because she’d had no clue what she wanted to do with her life.
The pottery class had been an utter failure since she had zero artistic talent, and her accounting professor had gotten arrested by the FBI and had his computers confiscated the week before finals, so she figured the life of a CPA probably wasn’t for her either. She loved to read, so she thought an English degree might work out, but then she realized she’d eventually need to be able to find a job, so she discarded that idea.
The class that had stuck with her had been intro to pathology. Maybe it was because the professor had looked like he’d come off the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Or maybe it was because she’d found a quiet peace in that class she’d never experienced before. Lord knows her mother had never given her much peace.
Tess found the dead fascinating. What had happened to them? Were they young or old? What kind of life had they lived? Did anyone miss them? She’d almost gone pre-med to become a medical examiner, but she realized that would only answer some of the questions she had about the people who would end up on a slab in front of her.
The other questions could only be answered by the living—by a spouse or parent or child. Tess wanted to know what made the person worth remembering in death. It seemed a question that was more important than it should’ve been. Maybe because she constantly wondered who would remember her when it was her time to lie on someone’s slab.
A crack of thunder shook the panes in the windows on the third floor of the old Queen Anne house. Rain pelted against the roof as Tess lay on top of the covers in nothing but her underwear. But it didn’t do much to help cool her off. She propped her hands behind her head and stared at the cracks in the plaster on the ornamental ceiling. The fan in the corner was working overtime, and she’d opened the two windows as wide as she dared. The edges of the white curtains were damp, and she’d put a towel on the floor in front of each window to keep the wood from getting wet.
She glanced at the big red numbers on the clock sitting on the bedside table, just like she had for the last two hours. It was five-thirty, which in her mind was at least a somewhat acceptable time to be up and about, and she did have work to do.
Delores Schriever was in the cooler and ready to be dressed and made up, so she could be laid out in slumber room one. Delores had been the first customer she’d had in weeks. Business wasn’t exactly booming at the Last Stop Funeral Home. Which was a good thing for the citizens of Last Stop. Not so great for her.
Tess knew the funeral home should have been operating in the red. But her paycheck showed up like clockwork every two weeks in her bank account—and it was more than a decent paycheck—almost double what George had paid her. And when she went to pay the home’s bills, there was always money in the checking account. Eve Winter had no interest in running a funeral home, but she had a lot of interest in keeping it afloat. Tess had no idea what those reasons were, but for the time being she had a paycheck and health insurance, so she couldn’t complain too much.
The Last Stop Funeral Home had been in the Jessup family for three generations. And since George’s son Jesse was a no-good son of a bitch, there’d been no chance of it being passed on to the fourth generation of Jessups. Which was why George had hired Tess when she’d moved back home after college. He’d shown her the ropes and she’d learned under his tutelage. The funeral home was supposed to be hers, and in another ten years or so, when George was ready to retire, it would’ve been.
Except Eve Winter had ridden into town like one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, with her floor-length white coat and cherry-red Porsche Carrera, and made George an offer he couldn’t refuse. George had no chance against a woman like Eve. Apparently George had ignored weeks of phone calls from the woman and wouldn’t entertain the offer of selling the funeral home over the phone. So she’d made the trip personally and brought cash. A lot of cash.
Fortunately, George had the wits about him to remember that he’d promised Tess the funeral home. And though he could no longer keep that promise, he at least had the wherewithal to put it in the contract that she’d be in charge of the funeral home until she chose to leave or until Eve decided to sell, in which case she had to give the first option to Tess to buy her out.
George had signed the papers, taken the exorbitant amount of money, and packed up his wife of thirty years so they could live on a Carnival Cruise ship. They’d left their no-good, son-of-a-bitch son behind.
The people in Last Stop weren’t fond of change, so word spread like wildfire about the fancy city woman who’d bought out George Jessup lock, stock, and barrel. But since no one but George, Tess, and the attorneys had actually seen Eve Winter, the exaggerations of her physical appearance had grown by leaps and bounds.
They’d gossiped for months about the rich woman and the extensive renovations on the funeral home and outbuildings. Tess had been living there on the third floor the entire time, and even she wasn’t quite sure what was happening with all the construction work. They’d set up partitions and giant drop cloths to keep the curious from seeing what was being done. In a place like Last Stop, hiding the progress only made people more curious, so there’d been a few late-night instances of people sneaking onto the grounds and peeking between the partitions.
The work had been completed in record time. Tess had woken up in the middle of the night more than once, hearing the distant sound of some kind of heavy piece of machinery. She’d worked around the chaos and clutter, but in reality, the construction crew had done a great job staying out of her way.
The unveiling hadn’t been a big to-do. There’d been no ribbon cutting from the Chamber of Commerce or open house. One morning Tess had woken up and gone down to the kitchen to start her morning coffee. It had taken her a moment to realize that something was different. There were no partitions. No drapes or curtains covering certain areas. Everything was finished and looked as if it had been there forever.
She’d stared in shock out the back windows of the kitchen. A full-fledged English rose garden had been planted at some point. And the carriage house, which the Jessups had originally used to park the hearses in the bays on the first floor and storage on the second floor, had been gutted completely and doubled in size.
It now looked like a miniature version of the main house, which wasn’t all that miniature if she thought about it. The carriage house had been painted solid white, and the bottom story still had the original carriage bays where buggies had once been stowed. The three bays were no longer used for parking, and large glass windows had been installed into each of them. The carriage house had been turned into a home gym of sorts, though she’d seen gyms that required a paying membership not have equipment as nice as that in the carriage house.
She didn’t know how much square footage had been added to the carriage house, she just knew that when she looked at it from the side, it took up twice as much space as it previously had. And then there was the casket warehouse. She also knew there had to be a hidden passageway somewhere on the property. She’d never seen a group of large men able to move in and out of space so quietly. One minute she was alone, and then the next . . . pffft . . . they just appeared out of nowhere and scared the ever-living hell out of her.
All funeral homes were required by law to have an area designated as a casket showroom and to provide caskets at different ends of the price spectrum. Mr. Jessup and his family had run a successful business for generations, but they also knew the scope of the clientele and the infrequency. Nothing was wasted and everything possible conserved.
The old casket warehouse had been not much more than a shed with metal siding. It was large enough to fit the six different caskets people could choose from and that was about it. The small metal building was no longer there. In its place was a warehouse that looked like it had been made out of concrete. There were several large windows with casket displays in them, and there was a large garage door on the opposite side to get the caskets in and out.
Tess had wondered if maybe she should have a talk with Eve. They weren’t the kind of funeral home to do the volume of business that the woman seemed to be preparing for. Half the people in town would have to drop dead for them to do that much business. But maybe Eve didn’t realize how inconvenient Last Stop was to get to from the city and that the only candidates who might use the funeral home were the 3,047 people who lived there.
Ultimately, Tess had decided it wasn’t her business. She wasn’t the owner, and it wasn’t her problem. Only, it kind of was her problem because if they went bankrupt it would mean she was out of a job.
While people had certainly talked, taken pictures, and gawked from Main Street at the Last Stop Funeral Home, it wasn’t the only thing getting attention.
What really had tongues wagging was the men. Five men, to be exact.
Eve had chosen Tess’s staff for her. Tess had been appreciative, but considering there was barely enough work to keep her occupied each day, she couldn’t imagine what she was supposed to do with the five men—the overbearing, larger-than-life, sexy-as-hell men. But Eve had told her they’d be busy enough, and she’d left it at that.
They certainly didn’t fit in with Last Stop, and there was something about each of them that made her a little bit wary and a whole lot cautious. Maybe it was the way they were always watching their surroundings, as if they expected the worst to happen. Or maybe it was the way they seemed to distrust everyone on sight. Tess couldn’t really blame them for that one. She always figured just about everyone had an ulterior motive when they showed interest in a person. But maybe she was just cynical.
What she didn’t like was all the talk around town about her and her merry band of death men, which was the name her friend Miller was passing around town, the traitor. Over at the Clip n’ Curl, they apparently filled hours of conversation with whether or not Tess knew the men intimately. And if she didn’t, would she be willing to make an introduction? Since her mother was the owner of the Clip n’ Curl, she liked gossip almost as much as money and men, so she didn’t bother trying to defend her only daughter’s reputation.
All of the ladies at the Clip n’ Curl were in unanimous agreement that Tess’s men were about as close to male perfection as they’d ever seen. There was Deacon Tucker and Axel Tate. They’d been her first two employees to show up out of the blue. One look at Deacon had made her briefly wish she was the kind of woman to grab the attention of a man like that, but looks were fleeting and she’d always have a brain, so she didn’t let it faze her too much.
No, Deacon had definitely given her a few of those breathless moments. The ones she remembered from her youth where her heart fluttered and her words stumbled over themselves every time she tried to speak to a guy. It had been a long time since she’d had feelings like that. She’d certainly never had them with Henry, the man she’d been engaged to. But she’d always assumed that flutter and anticipation would fade with age.
There was a reason there was a saying about people who made assumptions, because boy, had she been wrong. The flutters were more like jackhammers in her belly, and her fantasies were a lot more explicit than they’d been when she was fifteen. She’d once seen Deacon mowing the yard without his shirt on and the primal urge to pounce on him and stake her claim had been so strong she’d called her friend Miller for an emergency wine intervention.
She hadn’t had the same reaction to Axel. There was something about him that reminded her of a wounded lion. He had a great deal of pride, but he’d been flayed open by the enemy. He didn’t want to show weakness. And then there was the wedding ring he wore, even though he appeared to be flying solo. She’d never seen him without it, and he never looked twice at any other woman.
Less than a month after Deacon and Axel arrived in Last Stop, Elias Cole had joined them. He was different from the other two. He was more relaxed and even prone to making jokes from time to time. Of all of them, he was the one who’d stop and talk with her or see if she needed anything if he was going to the store. He was also the only one who’d ever shared anything personal about himself. She knew he was from Texas originally, and that he’d been in the military, though he’d never mentioned what branch of the service.
It had taken another six months for Dante Malcolm to join the group. She’d liked him immediately, though Miller said he was a little “too” suave for her liking, and that she thought his English accent might be fake. But he had manners and at least acknowledged that Tess was in charge of running the funeral home, whereas the others pretty much did as they pleased and showed up only when needed.
It had been a few months after Dante came that Colin Moreau had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, just like Elias and Dante before him. There was an anger to Colin that made her steer clear of the Frenchman. He was handsome enough, and he was always very polite. But she could see the rage bubbling just below the surface, and she wanted to be nowhere in the vicinity if he ever blew.
Eve had made it clear that the men’s employment was nonnegotiable, so there was no point in Tess complaining about them. They mostly stayed out of her way. Deacon, Axel, and Colin all lived in the carriage house. She had no idea where Dante lived, though she didn’t think it was anywhere in Last Stop. Everyone in town would know if he did. He seemed like a city boy to her with his fancy shoes and expensive suits, so her best guess was he had a place in Dallas.
Elias was a different story. He lived a few blocks away, in Last Stop’s one and only apartment complex. The reason she knew that was because Stella Longbow had followed him home one afternoon and then tried to tell everyone at the Clip n’ Curl he’d invited her inside but she’d turned him down since she was a happily married woman. What she’d failed to mention was that Elias had called the sheriff about a Peeping Tom, and when the deputy had shown up he found Stella crouched in the bushes.
But Eve had been right. The five of them always found ways to occupy themselves. If she didn’t need help with anything funeral home–related, they kept the grass mowed and the flowerbeds weeded, maintained the upkeep on the old Queen Anne house, kept all the vehicles maintenanced, and generally did the things she never could’ve done herself. She especially appreciated it when they did those things without their shirts on.
They’d started a pool at the Clip n’ Curl to see who would be the first to get one of the men into bed, though they’d told Tess she wasn’t allowed to enter since she had the unfair advantage of practically living with them. Since Tess had no intention of sleeping with any of them, and even less intention of telling everyone at the Clip n’ Curl if she did, she was fine with the banishment. So far, no one had claimed the $347 pot.
If Tess had a choice, she would never step foot in the viper’s nest that was the Clip n’ Curl, but every Friday like clockwork her grandmother had an appointment to get her hair done, and Tess was her only mode of transportation, so she was a firsthand witness to the conversations held between the sacred walls of Last Stop’s only beauty salon.
Tess had tried to explain to the women that Axel seemed devoted to his wife, but Jo Beth Schriever—great-grandniece of Delores from slumber room one—said that if Axel had a wife she was either dead or long gone, which meant he was fair game. Tess had never heard that rule before, but she’d conceded to Jo Beth’s explanation because the young woman had a gleam in her eyes that could only be attributed to baby fever or mad cow disease.
Carol Dewberry, who’d been happily married for forty-seven years, had offered to be the treasurer of the pool money since no one in their right mind would let Theodora be in charge. And anyone who had a lick of sense would know Carol would be holding on to that money for eternity, because men like the ones living in the carriage house weren’t looking for women like what Last Stop had to offer. They probably looked for women with edges and attitudes as rough as theirs. Someone as dominant as they were.
Tess had much better things to do than waste time chasing men. When she’d been engaged to Henry, she had barely dodged the marriage bullet. She was an educated and independent woman with her whole life ahead of her. She’d watched her mother do nothing but chase men and money, and she’d be damned if she ever did the same.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t want to settle down someday. She did. And she wanted a family. The kind of family she’d missed out on growing up. But she also wanted to be picky. She didn’t want to settle for someone like Henry, and she almost had. She wanted to be an equal partner. And she wanted excitement and passion at least once in her life. There was nothing wrong with that.
She was thirty years old, so she figured she had a few more years before she really needed to panic. Besides, her social calendar was about as full as it could get. She worked (granted, the dead weren’t exactly considered social), she took yoga three mornings a week (though sometimes she walked right by the studio to the donut shop next door), she was a member of a book/wine club (albeit, she and her best friend Miller were the only members), and she’d almost worked all the way through her expert-level crossword puzzle book.
Busy. As. Hell.
She’d never been the type of woman to be able to attract a man like Deacon Tucker, but there was something about him that . . . clicked. Sure, he was sexy as hell. He had those dark, brooding good looks that reminded her of the heroes she liked to read about. And his hands . . . they were large and rough—working man’s hands. Then there was that hint of a dimple in his cheek that peeked out during one of his rare smiles, and the slight misalignment in the bridge of his nose that made her curious to know how he’d broken it.
And then there was the fact that he was just a good guy. He was a man who liked to keep busy, and more often than not if things were slow, he’d fix something around the funeral home or work in the yard. The harder the work, the more he seemed to like it, as if he were punishing himself by working himself to the bone.
He wasn’t amusing or boisterous like Elias, or smooth and charming like Dante. But there was an air about him that stood out from the others. He commanded without having to say a word. She was drawn to him, and there were moments when they spoke or stood close that the space around them was so electrically charged she didn’t know how others couldn’t feel it.
His eyes were an intense blue she could get lost in for hours. There’d been a moment not too long ago when she thought he might lean down and kiss her. When they’d been lost in conversation, their words softening to whispers and their breath mingling as they stood close together. A spell had been cast, and she’d leaned in, only to be interrupted when the back door opened.
He hadn’t seemed to mind that afternoon that she wasn’t a bombshell and didn’t have the same raw sex appeal he did. He’d wanted to kiss her anyway. She hadn’t imagined the desire in his eyes. But she wasn’t going to change a darned thing about herself to try and get his attention. She was who she was, and what she wasn’t was the kind of woman to make heads turn when she walked into a room. Except the time she’d gone to a wedding reception with the back of her skirt tucked into her underwear.
She was done trying to please men. She’d learned that very difficult lesson with Henry. She wanted a man to please her for once, and if Deacon Tucker couldn’t look at her and see how great she was, then he just didn’t deserve her.
“Gah,” Tess said, grabbing one of her pillows and whacking herself in the face a couple of times with it.
Her internal monologue sounded dangerously close to the pep talks her grandmother used to give her as a kid. There was no dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed. What she needed to do was to make a choice for her future. Whether or not that future included the Last Stop Funeral Home was still up in the air. She’d never fit in in Last Stop. But it was the only home she’d ever known.
The biggest question was, if not Last Stop, then where?
“I’m a grown woman,” she muttered, tossing the pillow aside in frustration. “I’m not going to fear change. I’m going to take life by the balls . . . and . . . and . . . never mind. Life doesn’t have balls. It’s a ridiculous saying. I’m going to make an adult decision about my future and be happy about it. Dammit.”
Having made up her mind, she nodded defiantly and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She had no idea what that future held, but she couldn’t see herself living forever on the third floor of a funeral home she didn’t own. She should be settled by this point in her life—with long-term job security and at least the possibility of a home and family on the horizon. What kind of quality of life was it to spend each day behind her desk, wondering when someone would die? That was weird, even for her.
Another crack of thunder shook the room, and this time the red numbers on her clock went blank as the electricity went out.
“Well, shit.” It looked like she’d be showering in the dark. And she definitely needed a shower, considering the fine sheen of sweat that covered her body. Even with modern conveniences like AC, it was still an old house and heat rose to the third floor.
She moved to the window and stood to the side, slightly behind the curtain. She didn’t figure anyone who had to get up this early needed to be greeted with the sight of her naked body. She had the pale skin of a true redhead, to the extent that Henry had once shielded his eyes because he’d said her paleness was like staring into the sun. He’d been kidding—she was almost positive—but there was no need to be a glowing beacon in the window to anyone who glanced up.
The view from the top of the funeral home was something she’d miss if she left. It was the best view in town, not because downtown was especially nice to look at, but because it was interesting to watch the comings and goings of people in their daily lives. Watching from above sure as heck was more fun than being down there in the middle of them all.
The Queen Anne Victorian mansion, which had once been a combination of the Jessups’ family home and the funeral parlor, sat at one end of Main Street. At the other end was a Gothic-style courthouse, complete with ugly gargoyles and creepy statues of Justice and Mercy.
When the funeral home had started encroaching on their living space, the Jessups had built a new mansion outside of the city limits. The funeral business had boomed in the twenties, when prohibition and public hangings were all the rage. It had been convenient to put the bodies in a wagon and wheel them down the street in a public procession to the funeral home.
Nowadays, the most exciting thing she’d seen from her window was Ernastine Forster get into a tussle with Earl Twitty over the last handicapped parking space. Ernastine had used her battle tank of a Buick to push him right out of the spot. And then she’d popped him in the nose when he got out of the car to confront her.
Headlights glared through droplets of water as a vehicle turned onto Main Street, coming straight toward the funeral home. The closer the vehicle got, the closer she moved to the window, squinting so she could see better. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was her body transport van.
Her skin flushed with annoyance and she could feel the blood rush to her face. She’d always cursed her redhead’s complexion, but at least people could tell in advance when she was irritated or angry.
“What the hell are they up to?” Tess fumed.
The last time she checked, she was the one in charge of the funeral home, and she wanted an explanation as to why they’d taken company property out for a joyride in the middle of the night. Good grief, she didn’t really know anything about the men other than their names and a few things she’d picked up from conversation here and there. What if they’d been out drinking? What if they were using her van to sell drugs? She could get in a whole heap of trouble and never even know what hit her until it was too late.
She decided not having hot water was the least of her worries, so she hopped in a tepid shower, soaped, rinsed, and brushed her teeth to save time, and then hopped back out again just a few minutes later. Since she’d be working on Mrs. Schriever for most of the day, she pulled on jeans and an old button-down oxford shirt in a blue pinstripe. It was soft and a little frayed around the collar and cuffs, but she’d keep the sleeves rolled up. It wasn’t like Mrs. Schriever was going to complain about her sartorial choices.
Tess had never been one for makeup, but she slathered on moisturizer and piled her wet hair on top of her head, pinning it with a couple of bobby pins. It probably wouldn’t stay, as her hair had a mind of its own, but trying was half the battle.
She grabbed a flashlight from her nightstand drawer and headed into the darkness of the house. When Eve had done renovations, she hadn’t touched the top two floors. Tess wasn’t sure if she was trying to save money, or if it was her way of showing her irritation that George Jessup had made sure Tess was there to stay. Either way, the old and new didn’t mix all that well, and it was probably a good thing no one but her ever ventured past the first floor.
The floors and wallpaper were original to the house, and the hallways were cramped and narrow. And when it was raining, like it was now, it smelled like a hundred-plus years of moldy, wet house. The only rooms on the third floor were the large bedroom she used, which had once been the nursery, an attached sitting area, and a bathroom that had knocking pipes and low water pressure.
She stifled a sneeze at the small landing on the second floor, and then squeaked as something nipped her ankle.
“Dammit, Lucifer,” she hissed, letting out a shaky breath. She shone the light on the cat and he hissed back and ran upstairs. She wasn’t sure how he’d do it since she’d closed her door, but he always managed to find a way into her room. When he was in an extra special mood he’d leave a mouse on her pillow for her.
The black cat had come with the house, and according to Mr. Jessup, Lucifer’s ancestry went back as far as his own family. Tess was more inclined to believe that Lucifer was actually the devil incarnate and had been the only cat ever on the premises, since no one could remember kittens being born or a female cat in the general vicinity to make the mating dance possible.
Tess kept him fed, but he was just as unpredictable as the men who’d taken her van, coming and going at all hours of the day and night and generally being rude and surly. Though none of the men had bitten her on the ankle yet.
The beam of the flashlight didn’t hide the disrepair of the upper floors. The red-and-gold floral wallpaper had faded to orange and was peeling in places, and the carpet runner was thin and worn. The second floor wasn’t in use. The doors were always kept closed and most of the rooms were vacant. The rooms that did have furniture had white sheets draped over it. There was a full second-story balcony that went the entire way around the house, and there were white rocking chairs placed in pairs every so often. Green ferns hung from hooks and the glass gleamed. But the exterior was a façade that only pretended to welcome guests. Who’d want to be a guest at a funeral home anyway?
Once she got to the landing between the first and second floors, it was like walking into another house. The curved staircase and bannister were a focal point from the front of the funeral home. The carpet became thick and lush beneath her feet, and the bannister gleamed with polish. The original chandelier, which had once held tapered candles that some poor soul had to light every night, hung from the foyer, only with the candles replaced with candelabra lights.
Flashes of lightning lit the interior ominously as she crept down the stairs. She hadn’t heard the rumble of the garage door open, but the thunder had been pretty vigorous, and with the electricity out they probably couldn’t get the door open anyway.
It was an old house that creaked and moaned from time to time, but tonight, as the storm raged around it, it was silent. If there was anyone in the house, she should’ve heard them.
Unless they didn’t want to be heard.
She shivered, her flesh pebbling despite the heavy heat. The beam of her flashlight seemed insignificant against the big and drafty house. The front door was locked up tight, and she shone her light into the room to the left of the door—slumber room one. It was empty. At least for the next few hours.
Across the foyer was slumber room two, the wooden double doors wide open. Tables were set up with dark blue cloths for refreshments, which reminded her that she needed to put in a call to Piper Prewitt to see what time she could deliver the cookies for the viewing the next night. Piper made cakes and other bakery items out of her house because rent was too high in the strip down Main Street. But there wasn’t a person in a fifty-mile radius that could bake better than Piper.
Toward the back of slumber room two was a small formal parlor that had been beautifully decorated in shades of ivory and cream. The furniture was antique and uncomfortable, and the room was only used to meet with grieving, and sometimes not grieving, families as they picked out burial plans. She hated the room. It seemed cold and distant, whereas the rest of the rooms were done up in warm, tasteful colors.
Her office was under the stairs directly across from the parlor. Her door was also closed, which was just how she’d left it. She turned the knob to see if it was still locked. It was. The house opened up toward the back, where the kitchen was, and a wall of bay windows looked out over the rose garden. They were taking a beating out there, thanks to the storm.
She crept into the kitchen next, her favorite room in the whole house. It was open and airy, and there were pale yellow padded benches with pillows beneath each of the bay windows. She’d often grab a book and read there for hours, occasionally looking out into the gardens and daydreaming. Or when her grandmother came to visit, she’d make a pot of tea and wheel it over on the little tea cart, and they’d sit and talk about everything from the weather to politics. And they’d do it in Russian, because her grandmother was always afraid that the harsh, heavy language that was a part of their family heritage would someday be lost if not used.
Tess spent most of their time together promising her grandmother that she’d teach her children the language and tell them stories of the old lands. Though Tess wasn’t going to tell too many stories, because her grandmother had led a pretty colorful life. As the daughter of a Russian mobster she’d picked up a lot of things that most children shouldn’t.
The talk of heritage and children often led to her grandmother asking if she was any closer to giving her great-grandchildren, and if not, she knew of a nice young man or two who could probably get the job done. Russians were hardcore. And Russian women were worse than hardcore. Tess would rather face an alley full of maniacs than cross a Russian woman during the wrong week of the month. Or her grandmother any day of the month. So the suggestion of her having children wasn’t really a suggestion, but more of an order. And Tess wouldn’t put it past her grandmother to hire a man to show up on her doorstep one day ready to get the job done.
The longer she searched the house the more uneasy she felt. There were no beams from flashlights or headlights that she could see. It was nothing but darkness, the raging storm, and the occasional flash of lightning. It was moments like these when she wished she had a dog to keep her company instead of a satanic cat.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she whispered. And then she wondered why she was whispering. “Because I’m losing my mind.”
She’d seen the van coming straight toward her with her own eyes. They were around here somewhere, and they couldn’t hide from her forever. She wanted explanations.
Tess moved quickly through the kitchen and into the long hallway that led to the embalming room and attached garage. Those rooms hadn’t been part of the original structure and had a much more modern and clinical feel to them.
The hall floors were tile, and she’d once had hall runners put down, but the gurneys got snagged on them when she tried to wheel a body from the garage to the embalming room. It had only taken once for a body to almost tip over before she’d rolled the rugs back up and shoved them in a closet.
If people knew some of the things that happened behind closed doors at a funeral home, they’d more than likely opt to give their loved one a Viking funeral complete with flaming arrows. She’d heard some doozies of stories when she’d gone to a mortician’s convention, and she prayed she never had to explain to a family why their loved one had accidentally been cremated or why the wrong body was in the coffin.
The embalming room always stayed locked since there were thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment inside—not to mention a body—but she checked the doorknob anyway just to make sure.
Locked.
She wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans and moved across to the door that led into the garage. She fully expected to find the transport van inside, along with whoever had taken it out for a spin. But when she opened the door, the space where the van should’ve been was empty.
The garage was oversized so they could maneuver bodies between the vehicles, and her voice echoed as she shone the flashlight into the cavernous space and said, “Hello?”
Nothing but silence answered her back.
The black Suburban she used for funerals was parked in the middle space, and the twelve-year-old Corolla that only started if she put a screwdriver in the ignition was in the far space. But the transport van was gone.
She pointed the flashlight over the concrete and noticed the floor was wet with shoe prints, tire tracks, and mud.
“See, Tess? Not crazy,” she said, feeling vindicated.
So now what? She’d proven they’d been out with the van. And obviously they’d come back, at least for a short time. But why would they leave again? She looked at the time on her cell phone and saw it was just after six in the morning. None of it made any sense.
Eve Winter might own the place, but Eve wasn’t here, and Tess had only seen her the one time in two years. Tess was the funeral home director. Everything that happened within those walls was her responsibility, including the employees. And employees didn’t have carte blanche to use the funeral home’s equipment at their whim.
The hum of electricity filled the room just before the lights flickered back on. She blinked a couple of times and then turned off the flashlight. When she looked at the shoe prints a little closer, she realized they led right to where she was standing. At least a couple of the guys had come inside. But she hadn’t seen any sign of them.
Tess turned back inside the house to follow the prints, but the tile floor had been wiped clean. She could practically feel the electricity crackling around her. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the storm or her temper. Either way, her hair felt as if it were standing on end, and every time she touched something she got a quick jolt.
She closed the door to the garage and dug her keys out of her jeans pocket as she went to the embalming room door. Since no one was in the house, and she didn’t feel like going out in the rain to bang on their door to ask about the missing transport van, she decided to get to work. They’d have to bring it back at some point, and when they did, she’d be ready to pounce.
Mrs. Schriever needed to be bathed and made as presentable as a ninety-year-old woman could be made before Theodora showed up to do her hair. That’s if she remembered to show up. Theodora played bingo on Wednesday nights, so she wasn’t always in top form on Thursday mornings.
“Don’t worry about things you can’t control,” she whispered, feeling the familiar knot form in her stomach like it did whenever she thought of her mother and responsibilities in the same sentence.
A cold blast of air hit her as she opened the embalming room door. It was temperature-controlled to make working with the bodies easier when they were pulled from the refrigeration unit. The pungent smell of chemicals greeted her, and she knew the smell would permeate her clothes in the next couple of hours. In all honesty, she wondered if she ever really got rid of the smell or if she was just so used to it she no longer noticed.
Her hand fumbled for the light switch, and then she stood blinking as the fluorescent lights came on one by one. There was nothing old or antique about this room. It was white and sterile, and the light was painfully bright. It helped when mixing the embalming chemicals and getting just the right amount of color under the skin to make the person look alive. The fluorescent light was unforgiving, so it helped when reconstructive work needed to be done—from skin problems to autopsy sutures—a lot could be done with makeup and putty.
People wanted to remember their loved ones as they were when they were living, so she worked from photographs and anything else she could find to help make it easier on the families. It was easy enough to add the dye to the embalming solution so the skin took on a lifelike glow instead of the gray pallor of death.
The room was a large rectangle. The wall closest to the door on the right had cabinets and a granite countertop with a large farmhouse sink in the center. The wall directly across from the door was floor-to-ceiling sturdy metal shelves that held every piece of equipment imaginable. Sometimes mortuary work required being creative, depending on how a person had died.
The far wall was where the walk-in refrigeration unit was. The industrial door was large and stainless steel, and it locked from the outside with a lever. It could hold several bodies comfortably, though she’d never had occasion to use it that way. The wall to her left had more shelves and hanging racks, for the deceased’s personal belongings. But it was the center of the room that held her attention.
There were moments in time when what the eye saw didn’t necessarily compute with the brain. She’d taken three steps into the room before she really grasped what the body on the embalming table meant. Especially since it wasn’t Delores Schriever, who was supposed to be the only body in the room.
It looked like she’d solved the mystery of why they’d taken her transport van.
But who was the man laying on her table?