White Chocolate Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 31 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) Read online

  Paulette McCamish may not have had much in life, but her family had stated that she should be cremated with what little she did have, so the jewelry remained. Part of his process would include taking off the various pieces in order to clean and polish them. He was a stickler for detail, insisting that his “clients” be presented in the best way possible.

  Tim had been given a photo, by Paulette’s twin brother, Paul, so that he could see what she looked like when she’d been alive, and he’d already decided that there was no way he’d be applying as much makeup as she tended to do. He’d cleanse her face and give her a healthy, more natural glow with his special products, it was part of the joy of his job. His pride dictated that he make the cold cadaverous flesh appear more lovely and alive than it had in life, and his presentations were legendary.

  Chapter 4

  Echo sighed deeply when she heard a knock at her front door. Whoever it was, whatever they wanted, she didn’t have the time to deal with them. She and Spencer had been working late nights and early mornings trying to build up stock for when her candle shop opened next week, and they were now only a little bit more than half way to where they needed to be. She’d made candles that were scented in just about every cupcake flavor that Missy had ever invented, and her house smelled amazing every day. She hoped that she wouldn’t put on extra weight just from inhaling the delicious fragrances.

  Setting down the candle that she’d been working on, and realizing that if whoever was at the door took up too much of her time, she’d have to redo it, Echo headed for the door, just as the person on the other side of it knocked again, sounding more urgent this time. She was startled to see a tearstained and slightly tipsy Loud Steve on her porch when she looked out of the peephole.

  “Steve? Are you okay?” she asked, seeing and smelling the rumpled man. Her nose was assaulted by a wave of body odor combined with cheap booze.

  “She’s gone. I can’t believe it, but it’s true. Paulette is gone,” he muttered, leaning against the doorjamb, his eyes glazed, his speech only slightly slurred.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Echo frowned, hoping that nothing bad had happened to Paulette, whoever she was. “Who’s Paulette?”

  Steve stumbled across the threshold and into the house without being invited, and Echo sighed inwardly, a vision of the candle that she’d been working on flashing through her mind. He plopped down onto the couch and she winced, thinking that she’d have to scrub it down later.

  “We knew each other from the time that we were in grade school. I took her to the prom, went to her high school graduation, and married her,” he began rambling, surprising Echo. She’d had no idea that Steve had been married before.

  “It was good too,” he nodded, lost in nostalgia, seeming to forget that Echo was in the room with him. “Everything was good, ‘til I went to Iraq, then everything fell apart. We were gonna have kids,” he mumbled, his eyes looking a bit teary.

  Echo didn’t really know what to do, so she sat in a chair on the other side of the coffee table from her morose neighbor, watching him and letting him talk.

  “She got a job while I was gone, I mean, she quit working at the market and got a real job. Her boss took a liking to her, and she left me for him. She didn’t want to tell me while I was gone,” he shrugged.

  “I guess she didn’t want to give me the bad news and be blamed if something happened to me over there, so I got home carrying a big bouquet of flowers and a little German Shepherd puppy that I named Mack, and found that she moved out while I was gone. There was none of her stuff, nothing on the walls and no food in my pathetic little house. Not even a beer in the fridge,” Steve continued hoarsely.

  “I tried to find her, but nobody would tell me where she went. Turns out her whole family hated me cuz she told ‘em that I hit her when we were together. That was a lie. I may be a simple man, but I ain’t never hit no woman and never will. I fought for my country, I’m not a damn animal,” his throat worked, and Echo’s heart went out to him, as she saw him for the first time as a human being rather than just her obnoxious neighbor.

  No wonder the poor man went out of his way to get attention any way that he could. He basically had nothing and no one.

  “What happened to Mack?” she asked.

  “She took him. I finally tracked her down through one of the gals that she used to work with at the market, and I showed up to her house with the flowers and the pup. She took Mack and held him, but refused to take the flowers or let me come in, telling me that it was over and handing me divorce papers. I signed ‘em right then and there, left her with the dog, and went out and got drunk for three days.”

  “That’s awful,” Echo murmured.

  “Yeah,” Steve nodded with a grimace. “I got in trouble with the law, nothing big, just petty stuff, and got kicked out of the military. Now I got nothin. I collect disability, sit in that dark, damp house and drink beer and smoke my smokes thinkin that maybe someday the whole thing will just go up in flames and I’ll be better off,” the defeated man dropped his head to his chest and sighed.

  “Oh, don’t say that, Steve. Don’t give up,” Echo implored, heartbroken by his sad story. “Something and someone special will come along. I just know it,” she encouraged.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so,” she smiled, and he looked at her in a way that seemed almost desperately predatory.

  “No Steve, not me. You and I are just friends, but at some point, someone special will come along,” she clarified, drawing back unconsciously.

  His hope deflated, he nodded sadly. “Yeah, sure. Now I got this other problem, though.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, almost afraid to hear his answer.

  “Paulette’s family…they’re nice folks, even if they hate me, but they’re poor as church mice, and they can’t afford what the funeral place wants to charge to have the ceremony there, so I don’t know if my girl is even gonna get a decent burial. What kind of horrible ex-husband am I if I can’t even do that for her? Goodness knows I can’t pay for it.”

  “I have an idea about that. When were you wanting to have the funeral?” Echo asked, thinking.

  “Probably like this Thursday. Everybody she knows lives here in Calgon, so it’s not like we need to wait for folks to travel to get here.”

  “Can’t her boyfriend from work pitch in?”

  Steve made a disgusted face. “That lowlife scumbag dumped her about two weeks after I got back. She was so embarrassed that she quit that job and found another one. He even kept the dog, Mack.”

  “Well, I might know of a place that I can get for you, but I’ll have to check on it. Why don’t you go home and get some rest and I’ll tell you what I find out either this evening or tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure. I guess,” he shrugged, miserable.

  He heaved himself to his feet, and the scent of him wafted over to her, causing her to put a hand discreetly over her nose as she followed him to the door to see him out.

  “Take care, Steve,” she patted him on the arm on his way out. “Everything will work out.”

  “Yeah,” was his disbelieving reply.

  Chapter 5

  “A funeral? At the Inn? Oh, Echo, honey…I don’t know…” Missy made a face when Echo made her strange request. “Why don’t they just have it at the funeral home?”

  “Because, even if the whole family pools their resources, they can’t afford it,” her friend replied, clearly upset. “Do you even know what it feels like to be that poor?”

  Missy bit her lip and shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. “Even when my parents died, I was only seventeen, but they had insurance so it wasn’t even an issue…and when my sister died, the shop was doing well enough that I could afford to pay for her services. I can’t imagine what it must be like to not be able to pay for a funeral for a loved one,” her eyes got moist.

  “Exactly. That’s why I thought that we could have the funeral here.”

&nb
sp; “What if Chas and I donated the money to pay the funeral home?”

  Echo shook her head. “These are proud people. They’d never accept it, but if you offered up the ballroom, I bet I can talk them into it.”

  Missy nodded. “I could bake up some cupcakes, and Maggie can help me provide a buffet lunch for them afterwards. That way they wouldn’t have to worry about how to feed their guests,” she started imagining the logistics.

  “Oh, Missy, that would mean so much to that grieving family. The woman was only thirty-seven years old.”

  “Oh my goodness, that’s so young for a heart attack, poor dear,” she dabbed at her eyes. “You go ahead and tell Steve that we’ll have the funeral here, and just let me know when and how many.”

  “Thanks, I knew I could count on you,” Echo hugged her tender-hearted friend. “I’ll be here to make sure that everything goes smoothly. Apparently there’s a bit of conflict between Steve and the deceased’s family.”

  “Conflict? What kind of conflict?”

  Echo explained what Steve had told her, and Missy was as sad to hear it as she had been.

  “What an awful situation all the way around,” she shook her head.

  “Yeah,” Echo agreed. “But at least this way, maybe they’ll get a chance to mend fences and make peace with each other. I mean, he loved her and they loved her, at least they can agree on that.”

  “Hopefully,” Missy made a face. “It sounds a little “Hatfield and McCoy” to me.”

  “Well, our forces of good will just have to override their negative attitudes then, won’t they,” she smiled conspiratorially.

  “I sure hope so.”

  Chapter 6

  “Is everything all set then?” Paul McCamish asked Tim, sitting across the desk from him at Memorial Mortuary.

  “I believe it is,” Tim nodded. “You were with her when she died?”

  “Yeah, we had just finished our lunch. Fiona made sandwiches for us before she went to work. It was the last time I got to talk with Paulette,” he replied, swallowing hard.

  “Did you have any indication that she didn’t feel well?” the mortician specifically modulated his tone to sound concerned and supportive. He knew that that was to be expected at times like these.

  “Yeah, it was weird. She hadn’t taken but a few bites of her food and she said that she felt sick and that her face was kind of tingly. She ran to the bathroom and lost her lunch, and I was cranky because the sound of it ruined my appetite. Guess that makes me a horrible brother,” he shook his head.

  “Or just human,” Tim said quietly. “You didn’t know what was happening, so you can’t be blamed for your reaction.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “How did she end up on the floor?”

  “She came back to the table to rest, and then she said she was going to get up and get a glass of water. She didn’t make it but about three steps before she went down. She jerked and thrashed a little bit, and then it was over,” Paul’s voice broke slightly at the end and Tim nodded, pulling his face into what he hoped looked like a sympathetic gaze.

  He reverted back to the safest phrase he’d learned in mortician school. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks,” Paul replied, shaking his hand, taking a deep breath and trying to pull himself together.

  Tim stood, and politely led the grieving twin from the room. He’d begun the preliminary work on preparing Paulette McCamish’s body, but hadn’t yet done a thorough investigation. The mortician had seen hundreds of corpses who entered the death state through various means, including heart attacks, but what he’d seen of Paulette hadn’t led him to the conclusion that her death, indeed was the result of a heart attack. Something indefinite nagged at him.

  One of the things that he’d made a practice, after having allegations floated in his direction, was to have the families of the deceased sign a funeral contract which included, in the finest of fine print, provisions that would allow him to procure and store samples of the deceased in the event that samples might be needed at a later date. The process was perfectly legal, as long as it was done with the knowledge and approval of the family. It wasn’t Tim’s fault if the family was too preoccupied in dealing with their grief to read that particular clause of the contract. Their signature on the dotted line gave their consent, and the mortician took and froze the samples. The information that those bits of skin and muscle provided had come in handy more than once.

  “Thanks for listening, Mr. Eckels,” Paul said when he got to the door. “I really appreciate you taking care of my sister and all.”

  “It’s what I do,” was the benign reply.

  Chapter 7

  Missy, Maggie, Spencer and Echo had spent most of the previous day doing as much of the preparation and cooking as possible before the funeral. The Inn’s kitchen had been warm and delicious with the smells of buffet dishes and desserts, and now it was just a matter of setting everything up, so that once the ceremony was over, the friends and family of Paulette McCamish could have a time to eat and remember their loved one.

  Missy had foregone hiring a caterer, preferring to handle the sensitive situation herself, and she, Echo and Maggie were in a bit of a tizzy this morning, finalizing all of the food, seating, and staging for the funeral. Tim Eckels had arrived early, transporting Paulette and preparing the open casket presentation.

  Mourners would be permitted to file past the casket to pay their last respects until it was time for the ceremony, officiated by Reverend Parsons from the Methodist Church downtown, with remarks given by Paulette’s twin brother, Paul. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Tim would take Paulette back to the mortuary, where she’d be reduced to ash, while her family and friends feasted on Missy’s southern comfort food. Death was a sad business, but once a formal expression of grief had been made, and final goodbyes said, it was really just a matter of taking care of the practical aspects.

  Echo was appalled when Loud Steve showed up to the funeral with a heavily made-up and scantily-clad date, who chewed gum and twirled her bleached-blonde locks around talon-length fake fingernails. As a concerned neighbor, she took him aside for a hastily whispered conversation and discovered, to her dismay, that, not only had he been drinking before noon, but also that, apparently, rather than showering, he’d just doused himself in cheap cologne.

  “Steve, what were you thinking, bringing a date to your ex-wife’s funeral? How do you think that’s going to make her family feel?” she whispered urgently.

  “I don’t care how they feel,” he said loudly, looking around as though daring anyone to challenge him. Fortunately, Paulette’s brother and sister were in the parlor already, and didn’t hear him. “Them people have treated me like dirt from the beginning. They can just take their judgment and…” he began to bluster, but Echo cut him off.

  “Steve! Let’s just try to be nice to everyone today. For Paulette’s sake…okay?” she pleaded, casting worried glances toward the parlor, where the brassy broad that her neighbor had dragged along was hovering by the door.

  “I don’t even know if she ever loved me,” he muttered. “The minute I left, she ran to her boss. I coulda died over there and it was like she didn’t even care.”

  “Steve,” Echo placed a sympathetic hand on his arm, trying to comfort him and stop that line of thinking all at once.

  He shrugged away from her, headed for the parlor.

  “Whatever,” he growled, walking to his date and slapping her bottom before entering the viewing room.

  Missy and Echo exchanged a worried look.

  “Spencer?” Missy whispered.

  Echo nodded. “Better safe than sorry. Yeah, let’s send in our peacekeeper, in case things get out of hand.

  She motioned to the suited Marine, who’d been standing in the foyer, greeting guests and directing them to the parlor. The viewing and ceremony would take place in the parlor, with guests retiring to the ballroom for the buffet. Spencer, as usual, would function as securi
ty and would be keeping an eye on the social dynamic in case subtle intervention was needed. He bent down so that Echo could give him discreet instructions, then nodded and strode toward the parlor.

  “Oh, I hope nothing ugly happens in there,” Missy worried.

  “Me too.”

  **

  Steve at least left his date sitting in the front row while he went to pay his last respects to his ex-wife, Paulette McCamish. Tim stood discreetly to the side of the casket, and looked at his neighbor nervously when he approached. To his credit, Steve chose to simply not acknowledge the mortician, rather than being overtly hostile, as was his usual practice.

  The reeking man bent over Paulette’s cold, still form, as though giving her a hug, and looked at her intently, then raised his gaze to consider Tim for the first time.

  “She looks good,” he nodded, with an almost lascivious expression. “Better than she used to anyhow. Ya think you could give this one a makeover for me?” he jerked his head over his shoulder in reference to the woman that he’d brought with him.

  Tim was horrified, but years of training and a lack of desire to reveal any sort of emotion in front of this vile man kept his face impassive, and he said nothing.

  “Seriously, man. You could give up the death gig and do this stuff for living people,” Steve wouldn’t let it go. “In fact, she’s…” he broke off in mid-sentence, much to Tim’s relief, and stared down at Paulette’s hands, which were resting, crossed over her mid-section.

  “Where is it?” he growled suddenly, squinting at the mortician.