Mom was in such a tizzy when I got home that she didn’t even notice I was late.
Snow was forecast. Not a lot, just a few flurries, but enough of a nuisance that if the line for Erin’s wake stretched from our front door to the outside, as we expected, people would be griping about how Riccoli and Sons had done a much better job of handling the mayor’s calling hours last year.
I hid my bag in the locked hall closet so I’d have it at the ready if I got a moment alone with Perfect Bob. In the three years Mom and Bob had been dating, I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever wanted to get him alone. But now there was no one I wanted to speak to more.
Besides Matt.
“There’s no use in worrying about the weather,” Oma said soothingly as my mother anxiously watched our retrieval guy, Manny, tack an awning above our walkway. “We’ll get a few space heaters, some blankets, and I’ll make hot chocolate.”
“Sounds more like a tailgate party than a wake,” chimed in Boo, who was at the kitchen table, high heels on the chair, folding pale-lavender memorial cards. “I say let them suffer. A teenager was murdered, for Chrissake. No one’s going to grumble about a little snow when you’ve got two devastated parents barely able to stand.”
Boo was right. When tragedy struck, people wanted to suffer—as long as they didn’t have to suffer too much.
“I’m with Auntie on this one,” I said, inspecting one of the memorial cards. It featured a photo of Erin smiling in her prom dress. Below, her name appeared in raised silver print.
ERIN ANNE DONOHUE
MAY 1, 1995–OCTOBER 28, 2012
A LIFE THAT TOUCHES OTHERS GOES ON FOREVER . . .
It especially goes on forever when that life touches you with sharpened stiletto nails, I thought, massaging my itchy scars.
Mom turned away from the window and, as if just noticing I’d arrived, said, “Did you get the folding chairs out of storage and set them up?”
“Not yet.”
“Get on it, then. We need fifty in both Paradise and Eternity. Check to make sure the displays Kate Kline and Allie Woo set up are in the right places. Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”
How did she do that? Nag without stopping to breathe.
“I look fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“No, you don’t. You look inappropriate.”
“Ruuuuuth,” Boo cautioned, keeping her focus on the memorial cards. “Let it go. Lily is meeting you halfway.”
Seriously. Compared to Boo or even my regular wardrobe, I was fairly conservative. No corsets or ominous heavy crosses. Just a plain scoop-neck gray sweater—tight-fitting, sure, but what wasn’t in my wardrobe?—and a ruffled black lace skirt. I’d even toned down the eyeliner so it was less Sharpie, more Bic fine point.
Mom straightened her posture. “With all due respect, Barbara, I know how to raise my daughter and run this business. The Donohues are going through hell, and the last thing they need is my child directing all the attention to herself.”
I was so not directing attention to myself.
Boo eyed Mom knowingly. “The Donohues are in a blur of grief. They’ll never remember what Lily wears. You’re just worried about what the cops will think.”
I said, “You mean Perfect Bob.”
“No,” Boo said, tidying the stack of memorial cards. “I mean cops. After the wake tonight, the place is going to be . . .”
“Ahem.” Mom cut her off. “We’ll discuss that later.”
Behind her, Boo pantomimed a slice through her throat.
I decided to get those chairs.
The Eternity parlor was our biggest room. It connected to Serenity via a field of dirt-defying speckled beige carpet, which led to the more secluded Paradise. Paradise was smaller, with only one bay window shielded by the frilly dove-white satin curtains found in every mortician’s catalog. It smelled permanently of lemon Pledge.
This was where the family would stand, tissues wadded in hands, to nod in polite gratitude while mourner after mourner somberly recounted some bittersweet story from Erin’s past—how she once babysat their kids and taught them how to weave God’s eyes with Popsicle sticks, how she always wore a sweet smile and was so pretty, so very pretty. And bright, too!
Students, friends, and awkward teenagers of whom their daughter had never spoken would claim to have had a close personal bond. If I were in the receiving line, I would wonder which of the hands I shook had killed Erin.
Call it a hunch, a sixth sense from having spent my life in a funeral home, but I knew the killer would be here. Because he knew that if he didn’t show, that in itself would appear suspicious.
After setting up the chairs in Eternity and Paradise, I was lugging some more into Serenity when I almost stumbled upon the mahogany casket and froze.
It was closed, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the last time Erin and I were alone was Saturday in the graveyard when we had our fight. I couldn’t help but feel that there was unfinished business between us and that somehow she had managed to wreak more revenge on me while she was dead than when she was alive.
Okay, no, I told myself, arranging the chairs. Boo might have claimed she “sensed” the spirits of the dead when she worked late at night down in the prep room, but I’d never had that experience, and if I did, I would pack up and move to Sara’s.
Flipping on the lights, I cranked the dimmers to full brightness so I could see what Allie and Kate had tacked to the easel they’d set up for Erin. There was a framed baby photo of Erin in the bath, bubbles on her head shaped into a crown. In a white dress and veil for her first communion. As a Girl Scout selling cookies. On a nearby table, they placed one of her championship trophies, her medal as a member of Model UN last spring in Harrisburg, and a sepia-toned Instagram picture of Matt and her at the junior prom. Erin was in a skimpy pink dress, Matt gazing at her with absolute adoration.
I was thinking Allie and Kate did a lovely job when the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Slowly, I repositioned the photo of Matt and Erin and turned.
His wire frames glinted under the light as he approached the table, our ancient floorboards squeaking with each of his footsteps. Detective Zabriskie from the Pennsylvania State Police, Homicide Division, at my service.
“Lovely couple,” he said, picking up the prom photo for a closer look. “Her mother tells me they were going to get married someday.” Putting it down, he stressed, “Were.”
There was so much he didn’t know, it would be laughable—if Matt’s innocence weren’t at stake.
“Calling hours aren’t until seven,” I said, setting a vase of white lilies nearby so the flowers bent gracefully.
“Guess I’m early, then.” He positioned the photo next to Erin’s favorite doll from her childhood, a worn teddy bear in a plaid skirt. “Heartbreaking, isn’t it? Just the other day she was a baby, the apple of her parents’ eyes.” He ran his fingers over her baptismal gown, white with a lace bonnet. “And then some selfish bastard decides it’s within his right to take her life just because she got in the way of what he wanted.”
I batted my eyes, amazed that a man with his training could be so daft. “Can I help you, Detective Zabriskie?” I asked, flicking off a dead leaf that had fallen from one of the flower arrangements. “Because if not, I have some homework to do before the wake.”
He strolled over to the casket and, without so much as a by-your-leave, lifted the lid. Erin was there, just as we’d left her on Monday night, eyes closed and sleeping blissfully. If Zabriskie was gambling that the sight of her would be a shock, he was mistaken. I’d probably seen more corpses in my seventeen years than he’d seen in his lifetime.
“We received a tip that you and Matt Houser were in the cemetery last night.”
“Oh?” Where did he get that?
“You mind telling me what you two were up to?” he asked, swiveling away from Erin.
“Detective Zabriskie,” I replied calmly. “I’m not a cop, and I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but you’re wasting your time on Matt and me. We didn’t kill Erin. I didn’t kill Erin. Matt didn’t kill Erin. Whoever did is laughing himself silly that you’re focusing on us when you should be focusing on him.”
The corner of Zabriskie’s mouth twisted. “Then I’ll take that as a yes, you do mind telling me what you were up to.”
Forget it. I couldn’t win. “How about a compromise? I’ll give you some info if you give me some info.”
Zabriskie squinted. “Depending on the intelligence, it’s a deal.”
“Okay. Stay right there.” I went around the corner and down the hall to the coat closet, opening it with a key we kept under the vase on a side table. I passed through the kitchen to get a ziplock bag, ignoring my mother’s hysterical shrieks about whether I’d set up the stupid chairs, and returned to Serenity.
“Here,” I said, slipping a pen under the handle of the cup and transferring it to the ziplock bag. “Compare the prints on this to the prints you found at Erin’s house. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
Zabriskie pinched the bag at one corner. “What is this?”
“A cup that was used earlier today by one Alex Bone, aka Stone Bone. He’s a barista at Pots and Cups and a ‘friend’”—I put friend in air quotes—“of Erin’s. He is also one weird dude.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Graves, but Mr. Bone has an alibi for that night.”
“What?” I said. “His mother?”
Zabriskie reddened slightly. “Well, yes.”
“Now, my turn,” I said. “Who called in with the tip that Matt and I were in the cemetery?”
“She didn’t give her name, but I’ll tell you this. She sounded young, I put her at your age, and the call was placed from a courtesy phone at the Potsdam Regional Medical Center. Have any idea who it could be?”
Immediately I thought of the Tragically Normals. They were the only ones who would have been evil enough to phone police headquarters with that kind of rumor, anything to deflect attention from themselves.
“No,” I lied. “Not a clue.”
Zabriskie adjusted his steel-frame glasses. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s a pity, then. Because whoever she was, Miss Graves, she is no friend of yours.”
And with that, he walked into Paradise, taking Alex’s coffee cup with him.