Chapter Three

I liked Logan. She was smart and reminded me of myself. It was easy to see that she was happy. She had a glow about her that outshined that two-carat diamond engagement ring she was wearing.

That’s the way I wanted to be.

Happy and in love.

I’d left my man in Chicago with him giving me the promise that he’d come for me. That we’d be together. Once he straightened out things in his life.

Those things that needed straightening out had included a divorce.

Dr. Alex Hale, Chief-of-Staff at Memorial Lutheran, where I’d been employed, was tall, good looking, and had an in with the powers that be, giving him the ability to help me get my job back. Or at least one in the morgue of a hospital.

Being a county medical examiner had been a job I coveted. The one that afforded me the life I’d dreamt about. But with the economy slow on the upswing, downsizing had taken that away from me. It hadn’t only been my lack of a job and living arrangements, though that had sent me back to Roble with my tail between my legs, it had also been Alex.

I found out that I had fallen in love with a married man. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded, although I had a hard time convincing my Auntie Zanne of that when she’d first learned about it.

I worked in a basement morgue, albeit a semi-modern one, it was the last place that gossip came to rest. And when it did make its rounds, I readily passed it up—it was too reminiscent of my small hometown and the life I wanted to leave behind. So, I hadn’t known. I had completely missed that the man I was dating was married—separated for more than four months—but still married.

I couldn’t count on Alex to help me out of my bind. Oh sure, he gently and sweetly wiped my tears away when I had to leave, but he couldn’t offer me a place to stay or security in our relationship. No, all he could offer was hope. And that now seemed fleeting. True, he had just visited with news the divorce was final and he was working on getting me a job, but deep down I felt like it might not be what I wanted any more.

I glanced over at Logan, smiling down at her ring.

That was what I wanted—the promise of forever love—I just wasn’t sure Alex was the person I wanted it from. Lately, it seemed, there was another man I’d been thinking about.

“You like living in the south?” I asked Logan, thoughts of me doing the same and leaving Alex. “You said you were from Cleveland, but I take it that’ll change after you get married? You’ll move to Georgia?”

“I’ve sort of made Yasamee my home already.” I saw a smile cross her face. “It’s different, but I think it’s growing on me. And what about you?” She asked. “Miss Vivee was surprised you were here. She said you lived in Chicago.”

“Yeah,” I said turning and gazing out of the window. “I was in between jobs, had a love life that wasn’t going as smoothly as yours, so I came home.”

“Home is always a good place to regroup,” she said. “You plan on staying?”

I let out something between a chuckle and a groan. “When I first got back home all I did was plan on going back,” I said. “I had planned my life,” I turned and looked at her, “meticulously. I mean down to the letter. I didn’t want to ever have to come back here.”

“There’s a ‘but’ in there, though, huh?”

This time it was me that showed a hint of a smile. “This may be bad to say…” I shifted in my seat and turned to face her, “but—you know that I’m a medical examiner, right?”

“I knew you were a doctor,” she said.

“I deal with death a lot,” I said. “I mean, I grew up in a funeral home.”

Logan chuckled. “Now that’s interesting.”

“It was. And you’re an archaeologist.” I pointed to her cap. “So you understand this working with dead people thingy.”

“I do.”

“I work as a medical examiner, I live in a funeral home and lately…” I bit my bottom lip, I was sure I was sounding morbid enough already without adding what I was going to say. “There have been a couple of deaths—murders here. Recently. And I’ve been kind of…You know…involved in solving them.” I blew out a breath. “And to be honest, that has made me want to stay here.” I shook my head. “I know that sounds bad. It should be because my family and friends are here. Or some sentimental reason like that. But the autonomy I have as the medical examiner and the…” I paused. “The feeling I get when I solve a murder. It makes me feel…I don’t know…purposeful.”

Logan broke out into a hearty laugh. I let a grin spread across my face, joining in her merriment, but I wasn’t sure what she was laughing about.

She wiped tears from her eyes, shook her head and started laughing again.

“Is it that bad?” I asked, scrunching up my nose.

“No,” she said, not being able to say much more through her laughter. She held up one finger, I guessed she had to work through whatever had tickled her funny bone.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’ve been solving murders here and that’s why you are reconsidering how you feel about staying?”

“Yeah. I know. It sounds crazy right?”

“No. Actually it doesn’t.” She drew in a breath and let out another chuckle. “I have been doing the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Miss Vivee says it’s my destiny.”

“Your destiny?”

“Her destiny, too, but yes. She said that she was told by a seer or something a long time ago that she would solve murders. And that she’d have…I don’t know… a sidekick.”

“And that’s you? You’re the sidekick?”

She nodded her head, a look of sheer amusement on her face.

“And the two of you are solving murders in Yasamee?”

There was a little tidbit Auntie left out when she updated me on happenings with Miss Vivee.

“Yes.” She gave a single nod. “Well really, the three of us. Mac, too. And we’ve been solving them all over. Even one in Fiji.”

“Wow,” I said. “And how is that working out?”

“Miss Vivee and Mac have this—I don’t know, sixth sense when it comes to murder.”

“How so?”

“They can just look at a dead body and almost instantly know what the cause of death was.”

“Before the autopsy?” I was skeptical that anyone could do that. It took an examination and many tests for me to make such a determination.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes opened wide. “She calls it before the medical examiner even has a chance to open up the body.” She seemed to be reading my mind. “It’s true. Once a girl walked into their family B&B, coughing, a little dirt on her jogging suit. Not fifteen minutes later she keeled over into her bowl of bouillabaisse dead.”

“Heart attack?” I asked.

“No. Dry drowning.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” she said matter-of-factly. “And Miss Vivee had told me before the autopsy came back that that was what had killed her.”

“Before the autopsy?” I chuckled to hide my disbelief.

She nodded. “Once they figured out a man had died of water intoxication.”

“Just by looking at him?”

“Practically.”

“I’m amazed.” I looked at her out of the side of my eye. “And a little skeptical,” I said aloud what I’d been thinking.

“So was I. I developed a close and personal relationship with Google,” Logan said. “I had to whip out my cellphone,” she pulled it from her pants pocket, “and look up everything they said to see if it were even possible. I still do. I mean whoever heard of dry drowning and water intoxication?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “But I’d never be able to identify it as a cause of death without an examination first. I can guess a lot of the times what it may be from a decedent’s history, but I usually wait until the toxicology report comes back to make my final determination.”

“Well, the two of them don’t need a toxicology report.” Logan waved a hand toward the house where they’d disappeared. “I know it’s hard to believe without seeing them in action, but they are good.”

“And so that’s how they solve the murders?”

“They figure out the cause of death that way, but for the actual whodunit? Those two are master liars. They should win an award. Miss Vivee comes up with her suspect list and we go out to ‘interrogate,” Logan made air quotations. “They come up with these stories,” she chuckled and shook her head, “I mean at the drop of a hat, and with that they get people to tell them stuff. They could sell tennis shoes to Nike.”

I chuckled. That reminded me of Auntie Zanne. She could get people do what she wanted, too. But for the two murders I had solved, what Auntie contributed may have helped in some way, but mostly she was just in the way.

“I don’t suppose they’ll be any more murders,” I said, “they were the first ones we’d had in God knows when. Roble is not Chicago. But,” I shrugged, “I think it helped me make my decision.”

“You’ve made your decision to stay here?” Logan asked.

Good question, I thought. Had I? My eyes drifted off, thinking that maybe I had decided to stay in Roble, only I’d never said it aloud. But before I could, I saw my three passengers as they exited the house sans Miss Eugenia.

Dr. Mac Whitcomb came out of the house first. Behind him was Auntie Zanne then Miss Vivee. They stopped long enough to line up and walk next to each other, arms looped together, heads straight ahead, but no words were shared between them.

Why was Eugenia Elder MIA?

Looked like the sun might rise before I could get them to their buffet.

Auntie pulled open the door to the back and climbed back into the van. Logan had gotten out when she saw Miss Vivee and Mac and did her usual—she got out and opened the door for them, giving Miss Vivee a push into her seat.

“I hate these vans,” Miss Vivee said.

“Where’s Eugenia?” I said.

“She’s dead,” Miss Vivee said.

“She’s not coming?” I said.

“You got cotton in your ears?” Auntie Zanne said from the back seat.

I sat quiet for a second, registering what happened in relation to this conversation. The three of them had walked out of the house, looking no different than when they got out of the car and walked in. Nothing as catastrophic as a death could have happened in that short of time and no reaction to something so devastating registered on their faces or in their demeanor.

“I was thinking dead means she didn’t want to come,” I said as explanation.

“Dead means dead,” Auntie Zanne said.

“It’s not she didn’t want to come,” Mac said his voice soft, understanding, as if I needed help grasping the concept. “It’s that she couldn’t come.”

“Because she’s dead,” Miss Vivee said, no tolerance in her voice for my slow uptake.