Nine

With my hands securely encased in latex, and my sweatshirt and jeans discretely covered by a freshly laundered white lab coat, I was as ready as I was ever going to be to face my darkest fears. I was about to view the very dead body of Jeb Carlson.

This thought had not stopped bothering me since I’d ambushed the front seat of Jack’s car. But if I was going to insist on playing detective, the least I could do was follow through on my promise. I was going to need to look at a dead body without my hands covering my eyes, and I was going to need to listen thoughtfully as Jack and Doc Fisker made professional observations and discussed theories. It would also be helpful if I could add valuable input, or at least offer an intelligent remark or two. I thought of some of the intelligent remarks I’d heard on television crime shows when one of the actors discovered a dead body. Marks on the neck meant strangulation; a blue face indicated asphyxiation; a body under water was a drowning … a smashed-in skull meant a croquet mallet to the head. Dang it! Cause of death was always so obvious!

Thankfully Jack and Doc Fisker were oblivious to the sweat beading up on my brow or the slight trembling of my hands. In fact, they were engaged in a steady stream of small talk, leaving me to mentally prepare for what I was about to confront in the morgue.

“Really?” I heard Doc Fisker say just before he turned his curious, over-large gaze on me. “You lost your job in advertising after making that ad?”

“Ah,” I began, pulling my macabre thoughts back to the conversation. “Yes.”

“Actually, Miss Bloom has a thriving online business now,” Jack added, snapping the fingers of his own latex gloves for a better fit. He cast me a grin and grabbed hold of a gurney. “She’s put all her advertising skills to good use, isn’t that right, Whitney?”

I suspected he was teasing me, but I was too nervous to do anything but nod in agreement as I followed them out of the medical examiner’s office. We then headed down the hall, past a lab, and stopped before what was obviously our destination.

“An online business,” Doc Fisker mused, picking up the conversation again. He paused to slide his ID card into the lock. The door opened and an attendant waved us through. “I don’t buy much of anything online. Don’t trust it with all that identity theft stuff. But now that I think on it, my wife purchased something online once. It was that book. Have you read that book, Miss Bloom?”

With only half a mind engaged in their conversation, I replied, “I don’t know, doctor. What book are you referring to?”

“Fifty Shades of Grey,” he said with an alarmingly straight face. Jack, caught off guard, missed a step. He also couldn’t help himself from throwing a questioning look my way. I ignored him.

“No, sir. I haven’t yet had the pleasure.”

“Well, the wife did, and let me tell you, she really enjoyed it.” A cottony tuft, resembling a slightly electrified albino caterpillar, wiggled behind the thick glasses.

The attendant opened another door for us and I was hit with a blast of cool air. We were now in the morgue proper. Dr. Fisker stopped before one of the many stainless steel doors of the body cooler. “Well, it’s your lucky day then, isn’t it?” This pronouncement was punctuated with a grin that definitely had no place inside a morgue. “Because I just happen to have a copy in my office.”

As the doctor talked he opened the little door, revealing two fish-belly pale bare feet. On one big toe was a tag. After a quick perusal of the tag, he cried, “Got ’em!” and gave a hearty yank on the drawer.

My own body, meanwhile, was taken with a violent shudder. I wasn’t entirely certain if it was due to the sight of the body draped beneath the white sheet or the mental image of the elderly Mrs. Fisker lounging poolside while reading S and M erotica. It was very likely a result of both.

“Just don’t read it out loud on the trip back to Cherry Cove,” Doc Fisker continued as he made ready to lift the sheet, “unless, of course, you want to.” The bushy eyebrows wiggled suggestively.

Jack, poor thing, blushed to the roots of his red hair.

My stomach churned, making a distressing noise.

Doc Fisker chuckled and threw back the sheet.

The sight was revolting. It was Alien-Autopsy-meets-Walking-Dead disturbing! The fact that the dark, lifeless eyes were staring directly up at me only made it worse. Beyond the angry black bruising and dented skull was the indistinguishable face that for the last seventy years had been animated by the soul of Jeb Carlson—curator of our cherry orchard and a true gentleman. There was no doubt in my mind that the poor thing had indeed blocked the business end of a croquet mallet with his head. He had a bruise the size of a dinner plate to prove it.

“Poor old bastard,” Doc Fisker said. “Quite the character. You probably didn’t know, but that book I’m giving you, well, this old trailblazer had it last.”

“Whaa … whaa … ?” Unable to form words, I looked at the doctor. “Oh dear,” I said, then collapsed on the hard tile floor of the morgue.