Chapter One

The Verbena Free Press

October 4

By Desiree Turner

Dangers of Drowsy Driving

On October 2, Verbena resident Violet Daugherty died in what police think was a drowsy driving accident. Ms. Daugherty lost control of her vehicle on County Road 202 at approximately 7:30 PM and collided with an embankment. Despite heroic efforts, doctors at the hospital were unable to bring her back to consciousness.

It’s difficult to establish exact numbers when it comes to how many accidents might be caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. There’s no test to be done like the ones that determine whether or not a driver has been driving under the influence. Still, estimates as to how many accidents are caused by drowsy driving go as high as 100,000 per year. Officer Carlotta Haynes of the Verbena Police Department said, “We don’t know what caused Ms. Daugherty to lose control of her car, but the lack of skid marks and the fact that no other cars were involved point to a case of drowsy driving.”

We should all take steps to make sure accidents like this don’t happen. If you find yourself blinking excessively, or don’t remember driving the last few miles, or drift from your lane, pull over. Take a nap. Get some coffee. Walk around a bit. Nothing’s important enough to risk your life and the lives of others on the road.

*   *   *

Generally, funeral directors don’t see the best version of families. Sometimes we do. Sometimes there are sisters holding each other up, or a son quietly supporting a father. Sometimes hands are held and hugs are given. The burden of sorrow and the good memories of the deceased are shared. More often than not, however, there’s squabbling.

Either there’s been some terrible illness that has eaten away at the family’s emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial resources—possibly for months or even years—or something cataclysmic has happened. A car accident. A tragic fall. An aneurysm no one knew about bursting like a malevolent Fourth of July firework in someone’s brain.

People are exhausted or in shock. Neither of those states brings out the best behaviors. Daisy and Iris Fiore, however, were one of those supportive exceptions when they came in to make arrangements for their father’s funeral. Daisy was the eldest by about two years. She was a little shorter and plumper with layered shoulder-length blonde hair and some well-applied makeup. Iris was one of those rail-thin women who started to look a little stringy after forty. She would be very low on the list of people to eat if our plane crashed in the Andes. Her dark hair with its gray streaks was cut in one of those sensible cuts. Sort of a reverse mullet with long bangs and short back. Neat, presentable, easy to take care of. If she was wearing makeup, it certainly didn’t show. They looked so different, but their care and respect for each other was the same. Iris pulled a tissue out of her purse and handed it to Daisy when Daisy’s eyes started to mist over while choosing music for the service. Daisy slipped Iris a cough drop and asked if Iris could have a glass of water when Iris got choked up picking which readings they’d like to have. They touched hands and held to each other. Which is why I was a little surprised when I heard Daisy hiss at Iris as I came back with the requested glass of water.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Why do you always think I did something wrong?” Iris stage-whispered back.

I stopped on the other side of the door to the Lilac Room, not wanting to interrupt them. It was good to give people a little space.

“Well, did you do something wrong?” Daisy followed up. There was a tapping noise as if she was rapping something softly on the table.

There was a pause, then Iris said, “Define wrong.”

Daisy made a noise of disgust. “We’ll talk about this at home.”

Iris replied, “There’s nothing to talk about. What’s done is done.”

The room went silent, and I pushed through the door with the glasses of water I’d been getting from the kitchen. “Here you go,” I said, acting as if I hadn’t heard anything. I certainly wouldn’t have even known anything could be wrong if I hadn’t overheard them. They sat side by side on the plump coach, the coffee table with various brochures and forms and the ever-present box of tissues in front of them. It was a room designed to foment serenity. No bright colors. No hard edges. No bright lights.

Iris and Daisy resumed their supportive-sister act as if nothing had been said, although now it seemed kind of phony. Was this a performance they were putting on for people who were watching? Or had that moment of instant antagonism been the anomaly? I went along with the good-sister act, but I was uneasy. My role as assistant funeral director at Turner Family Funeral Home was not to stir up trouble. It was to make sure there was as little trouble as possible. My job was a lot easier if people weren’t squabbling. Daisy and Iris weren’t fighting, but if something was bubbling beneath the surface that could erupt at an inopportune time, I wanted to be aware of it. We went through the stack of paperwork required by law and made the other general arrangements. Nothing else tripped my sense of something being wrong.

“I doubt we’ll have a very big turnout at the funeral,” Daisy said, emitting a waft of honey and lemon. “Dad was sick for so long. People have forgotten they even knew him.”

“I barely remember what he was like when he was well.” Iris’s chin trembled.

“It takes time,” I said. Families often got so caught up in the care of their ill loved one that they forgot who the person was in the first place. It was part of the function of the funeral. It was a moment to go back and reflect. People dug out old photos and home movies and rediscovered who the person was, what they’d been like when they’d been healthy and whole. People shared stories that revealed who that person was and what they meant to everyone.

“You never know about attendance,” I said. “If you’ll fill out this form, I can get your father’s obituary and an announcement of the service into the paper right away.” I gestured toward that day’s copy of the Verbena Free Press that sat on the low coffee table next to the couch. “Your father was well-known. I’m sure people will come once they know when it is.”

“They sure didn’t visit him in the past few years,” Iris said with a sniff.

I winced. “People don’t always know what to say or do. They get worried about doing the wrong thing so they don’t do anything.” It was a lame explanation, but it was true. People don’t know how to act around death. We always want to shove it under the carpet or into a dark closet so we don’t have to look at it. Then it feels unfamiliar and scary when it inevitably makes its presence known in our lives. And its presence is indeed inevitable. I grew up with death all around me. I’d thought that was normal for a very long time. It still sometimes surprised me that it isn’t.

“I suppose,” Iris said on a sigh. “Do we have to have the funeral right away? Could we wait a little while? So people could make arrangements to get here?”

“Of course.” Since they’d already chosen to have their father embalmed, we could wait a week at least before the services.

We finished up the arrangements. As they were leaving, with Iris promising to bring by whatever clothing they wanted their father buried in and some photos for Donna to use to make the memorial video, Uncle Joey knocked on the door. Uncle Joey is my father’s younger brother. He and my dad ran Turner Family Funeral Home together since before I can remember. They were always together. Best friends. Brothers. Coworkers. They took over from their father who took over from his father before him. I think everyone assumed that my sister Donna and I would take over from them some day. They were half-right for a while and now were completely right, at least for the time being. Donna did all the classes and training—she needed to do both what Uncle Joey did down in the basement and what Dad did upstairs—and took her place in the family business. I took off for Southern California when I turned eighteen without glancing in my rearview mirror, and I’d still be gone if I hadn’t managed to torpedo my own career as an on-air reporter with a hot mic incident that went viral. Instead, I was back in Verbena, working at the funeral home and wondering what was next in my life.

After extending his condolences to Iris and Daisy, Uncle Joey asked, “Are you available to help me with a pick up today?”

“Sure. We’re just finishing up here.” I turned away from my Iris and Daisy and mouthed “who?” at Uncle Joey.

He nodded to the newspaper on the coffee table. It took me a second to get it. Violet Daugherty whose single-car accident I’d written about for the Verbena Free Press. I turned back toward Iris and Daisy who were exchanging their own glances between each other and also surreptitiously trying to check the time on their phones. It only took a few more minutes to finish everything up and they looked relieved to be done.

I watched them go, arm in arm, Daisy’s hand tucked through Iris’s elbow. When we’d had to plan the memorial service for our father, Donna and I had spent a lot of time like that. Shoulders pressed against each other as we sat on the couch. A hand placed gently on the other’s hand or arm. You’d think we would have had it easier than most people. We knew the business. We knew what Dad would have wanted. We’d had months to get used to the idea that he was gone. It was entirely different when it was your own family.

Getting used to the idea that he might not actually be gone was taking even more getting used to.

I sat looking at the paperwork in front of me. Mr. Fiore had been on hospice care. His death had been expected, even, perhaps, welcomed as it released him from pain. What was it that Iris could have possibly done that would have made her sister that angry? That might or might not be wrong? And why wait until they were here at the funeral home to ask about it?

I headed downstairs to Uncle Joey’s office in the basement. Mr. Fiore was already there. Uncle Joey had picked him up that morning.

“Everything okay, Desiree?” he asked as I came down the steps.

“I think so.” I put the paper work I’d filled out with the sisters down on his desk. “There wasn’t anything weird about Mr. Fiore, was there?”

He put his reading glasses on and started going over the paperwork. He was a big man. He filled his desk chair and then some. All bulk when my dad—his brother—had been long and lean. Uncle Joey had gone gray young, which had always made him seem older than he was, but his hair was still thick. If I met him on the street, I might not be able to guess his age. “What kind of weird do you mean?”

I pulled up a chair to his desk. “I don’t know. Something out of the ordinary, something not right.”

He set the papers down and peered over the top of his glasses at me. “Why do you think there might be something wrong?”

I explained about what I’d overheard. “It sounded like Daisy was accusing Iris of something. Something bad. And Iris didn’t exactly deny it.”

“Did they say it had to do with their father?” Joey asked.

I thought. “No, but what else would they have been talking about? They were here making arrangements for their father who just died.”

“After a long and painful illness,” Joey pointed out. “His passing wasn’t unexpected.”

“I know.” I kicked at the floor with my toe. “It felt wrong, though. Maybe not wrong. Just weird. They were all sweet and supportive with each other until I left the room. Then they had this whisper-fight that made it sound like Daisy always thought Iris did things that were wrong. Then they both acted like nothing had happened the second I walked in. Like they were covering something up.”

“Or maybe it was something they didn’t want to talk to someone outside of the family about.” Joey turned back to the paperwork. “You did a good job with these. Very thorough.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a half smile. Doing good work at a job I didn’t want was a step up from failing at a job that I didn’t want, but only one step.“When do you want to do the pick up?”

Joey tapped all the papers into place and set them in a file folder, which he then stashed in his desk. He took off the reading glasses and set them on a little tray. He was a very precise man. “Now if you have the time.”

We didn’t drive the hearse to the hospital. It was a little too conspicuous. We kept that for actual drives to the cemeteries. The van was set up a lot like an ambulance. The back was largely open, but with places where we could secure a gurney so it didn’t bounce around in the back as we drove.

We pulled out of the long driveway that led to Turner Family Funeral Home and headed west toward town. Taylor’s Pumpkin Patch was open for business. It wasn’t crowded on a weekday, but the dirt parking lot would be full come the weekend. People came from all over for Taylor’s Pumpkin Patch and the Verbena Corn Maze. They stayed for the Haunted House and the Ghost Tour.

The Ghost Tour had always been a sore spot with Dad. He’d absolutely refused to be part of it despite being begged to be a stop on the tour. He’d said most spirit sightings were the products of grief. People didn’t want to believe someone they loved was dead so they found a way to keep part of them alive. He’d felt his job was to help people deal with grief and let go. The whole idea of manufacturing something that would keep someone from processing through their sorrow had been an anathema to him. One year, Tamera Utley, who ran the tour, had brought a group to the foot of our driveway. It was probably the only time that I’d ever heard my father raise his voice in public, with the exception of my volleyball games in high school. Tamera had stood her ground at first, pointing out that she wasn’t on Turner property and she could stand wherever she wanted with a group to talk about ghosts. Eventually she’d given up, though. She’d said Dad was putting out negative vibes that were scaring the ghosts away.

Gray clouds gathered west of us in the sky and there was a slight scent of damp in the air. “Do you think it’ll rain?” I asked Uncle Joey as he drove at exactly the speed limit through town, hands on the wheel at ten and two.

“I hope not. The corn maze always smells funny if it gets rained on.” He wrinkled his nose at the thought. The maze had just gone up. Right now, it gave off a smell an awful lot like freshly mown grass. That could turn fast with much more than a light sprinkle. It was close enough to Turner’s to have the smell waft over us if the wind was right.

We pulled into the alley at the back of the hospital. Uncle Joey parked and we slid the gurney out of the back, up the wheelchair ramp, and through the double doors into the back entrance of the hospital to go to the morgue. The squeak in the wheel I’d already greased echoed in the tiled hallway, only partially masked by the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead. We traveled the short distance to the morgue.

“We’re here to pick up Violet Daugherty.” I handed the clipboard to the woman behind the desk. Violet had been the office manager at the insurance office where my brother-in-law, Greg, worked and I’d written about her accident for the Verbena Free Press. Otherwise, I didn’t really know her. She must have moved to Verbena after I left and before I moved back.

The woman looked at the paperwork, nodded, and handed the clipboard back. Then she consulted her computer. “Come on in.” She got up from her desk and motioned to us to follow. She found the appropriate drawer for Violet Daugherty and pulled it out. Uncle Joey and I positioned our gurney next to it and made sure the black body bag was in the right spot.

Uncle Joey and I took our places at either end of Ms. Daugherty and shifted her onto our gurney on the count of three. We weren’t exactly the most evenly matched transfer team around. Uncle Joey was several inches over six foot. I was quite a few more inches beneath it. We made it work, though. Practice and perfection and all that.

Uncle Joey frowned at Ms. Daugherty’s paperwork. “Who’s her next of kin that’s making the arrangements?”

“A cousin back in Maine,” the woman said. “We had a heck of time tracking down who her next of kin was. I guess Ms. Daugherty was kind of on her own. I’m not sure the cousin ever even met her.”

“Really?” I couldn’t quite imagine that. Then again, my family was kind of tightly wound.

“Yeah. You’ll have to call her to make arrangements. Oh, yeah. Dr. Nate Johar will be by tomorrow to sign off on the death certificate,” she said. “Wasn’t he just at your place last week?”

Uncle Joey made a noise in his throat. “Seems like he’s always at Turner’s these days.”

The woman scratched at her head with her pen. “What’s up with that?”

Uncle Joey opened his mouth, but I rammed him with the gurney. “I have a service to prepare for back home. We should get moving,” I reminded him.

He shot me a look, but he started walking.

The truth was that the ME had been spending a lot of time at Turner Family Funeral Home for the last few months and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because we had the best lighting or the newest facilities. I was pretty sure it was because of me. Maybe I’d ask him a favor when he stopped by. Maybe Iris had hurried her father along to his inevitable and imminent demise. I’m sure she wouldn’t be the first person to feel it was a mercy to put someone out of their misery, especially if it eased their own suffering as well. Maybe Nate could take a quick look at Mr. Fiore and see if anything looked hinky because something certainly felt hinky.

*   *   *

Back at Turner, I opened the packet of Ms. Daugherty’s paperwork, found the cousin’s phone number, and dialed. “May I speak to Lizette Pinkston?”

“This is—” Before the person on the other end could finish her sentence, I heard the voice of a child chanting, “Mom mom mom mom mom mom.”

“In a minute, Clayton. Mommy’s on the phone.” There was some rustling. “Hi, sorry. This is Lizette. Who is this?”

“Hi, Lizette. My name is Desiree Turner. I’m with Turner Family Funeral Home. I’m calling to make arrangements for your cousin, Violet Daugherty.” I straightened the forms in front of me, ready to fill them out.

“Oh, that.” She sighed. “Uh, sure. What do I need to do?”

“I can walk you through it step-by-step.” That was kind of my job after all.

“Great. Oh. Wait a second. Clayton, get down from there this minute. Clayton, I’m counting to three.” A dog barked in the background.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked. “I can call back later.”

A heavy sigh traveled down the line. “There is no good time.”

“Have you thought about what you want to do with her remains?” I asked. “Any idea what she would have wanted?”

“I didn’t even know her. I think I met her once at somebody’s wedding.” Pause. “How much does it cost to cremate someone?”

We went over pricing. Lizette decided to cremate Violet and we would store the cremains until arrangements could be made. It wasn’t the most personal of arrangements to be made. In fact, it wasn’t personal at all. I felt more like I was taking an order at a drive-thru window than deciding how to handle someone’s earthly remains. Still, the cousin didn’t really know her and it really sounded like the woman had her hands full. Sometimes I have to remind myself that these situations weren’t mine to judge. Okay. A lot of times I have to remind myself that these situations weren’t mine to judge.

“Okay, then. We’ll be in touch,” I said.

“Thank you. You’ve been so nice.” Her relief was almost palpable.

I smiled. It felt good to help people. That was the part of the job that I liked the most. “No problem.”

“Could I ask another favor?” Her voice had gone up close to an octave. It had taken on a wheedling tone.

“Sure.” It didn’t hurt to ask, although something about that tone made me uneasy.

“She has like a house, right? Do you have the keys or anything like that?”

I was pretty certain she did have a house. I picked up her purse that they’d given us along with her personal effects. There was a key ring with one of those little Italian horns on it. “Yes.”

“Would you maybe go by it and see what I need to do about that? I’ll pay you.” The words came out in a rush.

“Oh.” That wasn’t exactly in our usual set of services, but this seemed like an extenuating circumstance. Besides, what would it hurt to drive by a place and take a look?

“Please. I don’t know when I’ll make it out there and I don’t know anything about this woman or what she has or, well, anything.” The barking got louder. “Clayton, let go of the dog!”

“Sure. I’ll check it out.”

“Do you know any realtors in the area?” she asked. “Clayton!”

I did. “Yes.”

“Maybe you could have one of them contact me?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. Gotta go.” And she did. Like right then. No good-bye or anything.

I actually did one of those old-fashioned double takes and stared at the phone receiver for a moment before I hung it up. I glanced up at the clock. I didn’t have time to mull over what had just happened. I poked my head into the living room where Donna was working while keeping her feet up on the couch. “I’m going downstairs to let Nate in. He’s signing off on Violet Daugherty’s death certificate.”

Donna snorted. “So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”

“Don’t work blue,” I said. “It’s beneath you.”

She patted her stomach where my niece or nephew was gestating. “You don’t get this kind of belly from not working blue.”

She had a point.

I skipped down the steps into the basement. Nate Johar had been my high school boyfriend. We’d broken up before we’d figured out how to work the coin-up laundry machines at the two different colleges we’d attended, but now we were both home. While I wouldn’t say we’d picked up where we’d left off, there was definitely something going on. Something good. Maybe. I hoped.

Nate arrived at the back entrance about five minutes later. “Hey,” he said, his voice husky. His hair was a little too long, but it looked good that way. He was tall, a little lanky, and had big brown eyes that looked like melted chocolate.

I reached up to brush the hair off his forehead. “Hey back.” I grinned, then backed away. Getting to see each other during the course of our work was good, but making out in the embalming area of a funeral home was a bit too morbid for me. “I’ll go get Ms. Daugherty for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll set up.” He disappeared into the embalming room while I retrieved Ms. Daugherty from our refrigerated area. “I’ll be right out here if you need anything.”

“Should I whistle?” he asked.

I blew him a kiss and left him to do his work. He came out a little more than an hour later, a funny look on his face.

“All done?” I asked.

He nodded his head as if it might fall off if he went too fast. “I think so.”

“What took so long?” I pushed back from the desk and turned in my chair. Generally signing off on a death certificate was a formality, especially when the cause of death was so obvious.

He sighed. “Something’s not right.”

“I thought it was a car accident,” I said. Car accidents were pretty straightforward. They were accidental deaths and had to be investigated, but it was generally clear what had gone wrong.

“It was. It was definitely injuries from the accident that killed her.” He nodded emphatically this time, less like his head might fall off and go rolling under a desk.

I wasn’t following. “So what’s wrong?”

He pulled a chair out from the desk and sat down. “She didn’t have any bruises on her palms.”

I still wasn’t following. “So?”

“So most of the time when people lose control of their vehicles, they grip that steering wheel really tightly. They’re trying to wrestle the car back under control.” He mimed gripping onto a steering wheel with his hands at ten and two. “It’s a reflex. The insides of their hands get bruised. It shows up postmortem all the time.”

“Carlotta thought she must have fallen asleep,” I pointed out. “Sleep is pretty much the same as unconscious, right?”

“I know. Usually, though, the people wake up at the last second. The motion of the car swerving wakes them up. Then they grab wheel.” He rubbed his chin.

“Maybe she didn’t bruise easily.” Not everyone did. If you poked Donna she’d turn black and blue. You had to hit me with a baseball bat to raise a mark.

He looked up. “That’s the thing. There were bruises on her hands. Just not on the palms. The bruises were on the backs of her hands.”

“What would that mean?”

“If she was unconscious, her hands would have dropped and then bounced up and hit the bottom of the steering wheel as she crashed.” He mimed hands jerking up quickly.

“Maybe her hands fell in a different way. Down by her side or something,” I suggested.

“Maybe. It still doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m missing something.” He rubbed at his jaw. “It just seems more like she was unconscious than asleep or possibly even having a seizure and I can’t find any reason for her to be unconscious or have a seizure.”

I was starting to get it. “Drunk?”

“Nope. No drugs either.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “No underlying health problems that I could find. She didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke.”

“Could she have tried to dodge something in the road and then overcorrected and, I don’t know, hit her head on the window and lost consciousness?” There were a lot of ways to have a car accident.

He shook his head again. “None of the witnesses saw anything like that and there were a handful of them.”

“Wouldn’t the car have slowed down if she lost consciousness?” The body relaxed when the mind went down. “If the car was going slowly, her injuries wouldn’t have been so bad.”

“Maybe. Unless she passed out and then had a seizure. Then it’s quite likely that her foot would have rammed down on the gas pedal.”

“So you think she passed out and then seized.” I drummed my fingers on the desk. “What would have caused that?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not seeing anything obvious, though.” He ran his hands through his hair, shoving it back off his forehead.

“I’ll have Uncle Joey keep an eye out for anything that seems wrong as he works on her. I’m going over to her house tomorrow. I’ll see if there’s anything there that could explain it.” Uncle Joey wouldn’t need to do much, but he had an eye for things and who knows what I’d find at Violet’s.

“Thanks. I feel like I’ve missed something. I’m just not sure what.” He frowned.

I knew exactly how he felt. “How about a return favor?” I still felt uneasy about what I’d overheard passing between the Fiore sisters. This might be my best opportunity to put all that unease to rest. “Did you sign off on Frank Fiore’s death certificate?”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Who?”

“Frank Fiore. Older gentleman. Died at home,” I prompted making a rolling gesture with my hands as if that would get him up to speed faster.

He frowned for a moment and then his eyebrows went up. “Oh. Yeah. Frank Fiore. Yeah. Why?”

“Was there anything funny about his death?” I asked.

“Not that I remember, no,” Nate said. “He’d been sick for a long time. Wasn’t he on hospice care?”

I nodded. “So you, like, didn’t do an autopsy or anything, right?”

“There really wasn’t a need to. His doctor signed off on everything. Why?” he asked as if he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer.

I jiggled my foot. “Just something I overheard his daughters saying when they thought I was out of the room. It struck me wrong. How about you take a look at Mr. Fiore and see if anyone missed anything on him?” I smiled. “Then we’ll all be even.”

He smiled at me. “Sure. You show me your corpse and I’ll show you mine.”

I went to the refrigeration unit and pulled Mr. Fiore out. I wheeled him into the embalming room and gestured for Nate to come over. “This is Mr. Fiore. Is there … anything strange here?”

Nate snapped on some plastic gloves. “Let me take a look.”

I left him to it.

After what seemed like forever but was actually only about twenty minutes, Nate came out. “There’s nothing mysterious about this man’s death. Nothing. He was on hospice. He had congestive heart failure, diabetes, and kidney disease. You understand what that means, right?”

I did. Our bodies aren’t meant to go on forever. After a certain amount of time, stuff wears out. “Could someone have hurried him along?” I asked.

Nate sat down in the chair across from me. “How do you think they did it?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Pillow over the face?”

He shook his head. “There’d be petechial hemorrhaging if someone had done that.”

“Strangulation?”

“He’d have a broken hyoid.”

“Drug overdose?”

He made a face. “That’s a little trickier. He had an awful lot of drugs on board. Hospice is pretty careful monitoring morphine, though. They’d have noted it if there was too much missing.”

I was out of ideas on how to murder an old man without leaving some kind of mark.

“Why did you think they did it?” He cocked his head to one side. “What exactly did you hear them say?”

“I heard Daisy ask Iris what she had done and it didn’t sound like it was anything good, more like she was shocked. Then Iris asked why Daisy always thought the worst of her.” It sounded a little thin as a reason to think someone was murdered now that I was explaining it.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yep.”

He shook his head. “They could have been talking about anything. Clothes. Food. Relationships. Whatever.”

“Why would you be talking about that at the funeral home?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe they were tired of talking about death and dying. Frank was sick a really long time. They’d probably discussed everything there was to discuss about his passing.” He hesitated. “Do you think there are other reasons that you might be focused on Frank Fiore and his daughters?”

“What do you mean?” I didn’t like where this was going.

“Well, they had a good long time with their father and you didn’t.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “They got to say good-bye and have everything settled. No unfinished business. No loose ends.”

I definitely didn’t like where this was going. “So?”

He shrugged. “You didn’t. You didn’t get to have any of those things. Your dad was here one day and gone the next.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Do you think you might be, uh, projecting a little?” He lifted his head and looked me in the eye.

I stiffened. “Projecting what? On whom?”

He reached for my hands. “Maybe they’re accepting their father’s death too easily while you’re still having trouble accepting yours?”

I pushed my chair back so hard that I bounced off the desk behind me like a bumper car. “He’s not dead.”

He held up his hand like a traffic cop to stop me. “Forget I said anything. Let’s talk about something else. Why is it that you’re going to be at Violet Daugherty’s tomorrow?”

I was fine with a change in topic. I didn’t feel like fighting. “It’s a long story. Her next of kin is in Maine and can’t get here and I told her I’d check what needed to be done.”

He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go.”

We walked up the stairs to the ground floor. The bell rang at the front door as we walked up. I opened it to find Iris Fiore.

“I brought some clothes for Dad like you asked. And some photos.” She pushed a garment bag and a box at me.

“Thanks.” I stepped aside so Nate could go out.

He stopped for a second and put his hand on Iris’s arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Iris. Your father certainly suffered a lot these past few years. I’m not sure when I’ve seen someone with more possible causes of death.” He walked down the porch steps to where his car sat in the driveway.

Iris watched him go and then turned to me, her forehead creased. “How did he know what Dad had suffered?”

“What?” I asked, watching Nate walk away.

“Nate Johar,” Iris said. “How did he know how much my father had suffered? That there were multiple reasons he might have died when he did.”

I straightened up. “Well, he’s the medical examiner for the county. It’s kind of his job to know about how people die.”

Iris’s eyes narrowed. “My father died on hospice under the care of a physician. There’s no need for the medical examiner to get involved.”

“Oh, we’re just being thorough.” I heard the nerves in my voice.

“Thorough about what?” Iris took another step toward me.

“You know, just being sure that everything’s on the up and up.” When had my voice gotten that high?

“Why wouldn’t everything be on the up and up?” Her eyes narrowed.

“He just took a look since he was here anyway.” My mouth was suddenly quite dry.

“At whose request?” Iris squared her shoulders.

“Ummm … I guess mine.” Might as well own it, I guessed.

“Under what authority did you have the medical examiner investigate my father’s death?” Her hand went to her hips.

“Well, no authority, I guess. Like I said, I just wanted to be thorough.” My head bowed a little.

“Thorough about what?” she asked.

“About your father’s cause of death.”

“Isn’t my father’s cause of death obvious?” Iris took two noisy breaths through her nostrils. “Unless you’re implying something. Are you? Are you implying that my father’s death was not from natural causes? That he was killed somehow?”

Crud. She was on to me. Although when she put it like that, it did sound absurd. “No! Of course not!”

“Good.” Now her lip began to tremble. “My dad was sick for a long time. A very long time. I have spent the past seven years dedicated to his care. I’ve fed him and bathed him and, yes, changed his diapers, and I did it for longer than I had to do it for my daughter. His death is a release for him and for me. I’m already heartbroken that the picture in my head right now is of a broken old man rather than the strong vital Dad of my youth. Don’t make my heart break any more by dragging his funeral out with crazy allegations.”

“Of course not. I’m so sorry.”

She stared for a moment and then seemed to make a decision. “Fine then. Here are Dad’s things.” She handed me the garment bag and the box and then turned to leave. At the door she stopped and turned. “Didn’t you meddle in Alan Brewer’s death, too?”

I spread my hands. “I wouldn’t call it meddling. That was a murder and someone had been unjustly accused.”

“Well, this isn’t a murder so there’s no need to accuse anyone of anything.” She glared at me.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She left and I fell against the door. That had been a disaster. I felt terrible. But did it seem as if maybe Iris protested too much? Plus, I’d never actually said I thought her father had been murdered, and yet that was where her thoughts had gone instantly. I wasn’t sure what else I should do, though. Nate said Frank Fiore had died of natural causes, and I had nothing more to arouse my suspicion than a snippet of an overheard conversation. Still, something didn’t feel right there. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Yet.