Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 05 - Mother Hubbard Has a Corpse in the Cupboard (5 page)

We moved slowly around the dance floor in perfect tune with each other. I could feel the strength in his muscles and his tenderness at the same time. I didn’t want the night to end, but I knew I needed to go home before I was tempted to take him with me. I’m not saying I’ve been pure since my divorce, and I only recently ended my self-imposed abstinence before Dr. Donald, but I’ve never had a one-night stand either, and I had no intention of starting. I couldn’t help it that parts of me flamed warmer and warmer.

By the time he walked me back to my car around midnight, I knew he was going to kiss me, and he did. Those warm places blazed scorching hot.
 

When he asked, “May I call you tomorrow?” I gave him my cell number. “And it’s okay to call during the day when you’re at work?” he continued.

I almost screamed my answer.

“Yes!”

4

Big Boy greeted me as he always does—joyfully, with his big paws on my shoulders and his tongue lapping my face. When he was given to me as a puppy, I didn’t realize at first that my cocker spaniel sized dog would be a
great
Dane in size as well as breed. He weighed more than I do before his first birthday.

I grabbed his leash off the door knob, and we went outside. He could hardly wait to squat. He gets bigger every day, but he still squats to tee tee like a girl dog. He also thinks he’s smaller than the oak tree in my front yard and tries to play hide and seek with me by standing behind the tree. He hasn’t realized that his head sticks out of one side and his tail out of the other.

As soon as Big Boy finished his business, he tugged his leash, dragging me to the sidewalk, and led me around the block a few times. St. Mary is a small town. I feel safe even after midnight, and who would bother me with Big Boy by my side? I don’t know how I ever got along without Big Boy. I’ve been married—and divorced—once each and I grew up in a house with Daddy, five brothers, and whatever assorted friends were visiting, but I’ve never felt so welcomed and loved when I arrived home as I do since Big Boy became part of my life.

My sister-in-law Molly, who breeds dogs, keeps insisting I have him neutered. He’s been to the vet for shots. He was also poisoned once, and he’s had his ears cropped, so it’s not that I’m too cheap to pay for it, but I haven’t had him fixed yet. Molly keeps telling me if I don’t have it done, I’m risking Big Boy getting loose when I walk him if the circumstances prompt him to chase a female dog for a little loving. That’s her word—loving—not mine. I call a spade a flippin’ shovel, and she’s not talking about loving; she’s talking about dog boinking.

No point in thinking about that tonight. I just wanted to finish the walk. When we were back inside, I poured Kibbles’n Bits into Big Boy’s food bowl and checked out my pantry to see if I had anything to give him as a treat besides MoonPies. Someday, I’m going to start buying groceries on a regular basis and get all kinds of special dog bones, but I never get around to food shopping. Not that my social life has been what’s kept me busy since Dr. Donald dropped out of my life.

Jane is a much better cook than I am, and when we shared her apartment while mine was being remodeled, I never had to even consider food. She always had something good cooked, and if I didn’t get home at meal time, I could microwave a plate. Nights when I knew Jane and Frankie were eating out, I’d stop by Gastric Gullah and pick up food to go. Maum’s fall would put a stop to that. She and Rizzie were the only cooks at the restaurant, and I knew Rizzie would close the business until Maum was in better condition.

Big Boy gobbled down some of the Kibbles’n Bits in his bowl while I stood staring into my empty refrigerator. Oh, well, I didn’t feel like going back out and trying to find something else to eat. I’d had a delicious gourmet dinner, but I still wanted something. What I really desired wouldn’t be in the fridge anyway, but I thought food might take my mind off the warmth.

Finding nothing else to eat, I took the box of MoonPies into the bedroom and put them on the bedside table. I stripped and dropped my clothes on the floor by the bathtub. Big Boy lay down on the floor beside my bed and eyed the unopened box of MoonPies. After a brisk scrub with peach-scented body wash and shampoo, I wrapped myself in a towel and went to the kitchen for a banana MoonPie for Big Boy. He gobbled it down while I put on an old flannel nightgown. The weather outside wasn’t cold, but that gown is as comforting to me as MoonPies are. I slipped into bed and rummaged through the drawer of the nightstand until I found a book I’d been planning to read.

I went to the University of South Carolina in Columbia, which is where I married and taught kindergarten before I realized both of those were mistakes. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the little children, but by the time I’d been through the divorce, I was tired of dealing with almost every aspect of my life, including five-year-olds who wouldn’t be quiet or lie down to take their naps. I came home to St. Mary and lived with Daddy for a while. I had taken voc ed in high school and earned my state cosmetology license.

In South Carolina, people who cosmetize (Funeraleze for putting on makeup and doing hair and nails of dead people) must have either a funeral director’s license or a cosmetology license. I got a job at Middleton’s Mortuary where I cosmetize and work as a girl Friday for Otis and Odell Middleton. I like it. The people I work on lie still and quiet.

Anyway, while I lived in Columbia, I met this writer named David Lee Jones. I enjoyed his first book,
Dark Side Of The Planet
, which is a collection of short stories, some of them rather Stephen King-ish. I read on Facebook that David Lee has written a sci-fi trilogy, so I ordered them through Amazon. Now, I’m a mystery fanatic to the extent that my second bedroom is full of stacks of mysteries instead of a bed. I don’t usually read sci-fi nor fantasy, but reading the first one of the three,
MoriaVaratu
, hooked me. Couldn’t put it down. When my work is caught up at the funeral home and I’m just answering the phone, Otis and Odell have no objection to my reading, but I’d been saving David Lee’s second in the trilogy,
The PyraMorians
, for a time to read without interruption. I settled in beneath the comforter and began consuming MoonPies and sci-fi.

I should have expected it. The phone rang. Two o’clock in the morning. I fantasized it was Patel, wanting to tell me that he was so infatuated with me that he couldn’t sleep either. I jumped so fast that Big Boy stood and looked at me. If it wasn’t Patel, I was afraid it was Rizzie with bad news.

“Callie?” The voice was Odell Middleton’s. He and his brother Otis are twins, identical twins, but no one could tell it by looking at them. Otis is a vegetarian who works out, tans in the tanning bed he had installed in the prep area (Funeraleze for embalming room), and had hair plugs put in when he started balding. Odell eats barbecue buffets almost daily, weighs at least fifty pounds more than his twin, and began shaving his head when his hair thinned. Their temperaments are as different as their looks, but I get along with both of them.

“Yes, this is Callie,” I answered.

“Gonna need you here at eight o’clock in the morning. I know you planned to come in late, after you saw Mrs. Profit, but we need you at eight sharp.” He giggled. “I apologize for calling so late, but Otis bet me you weren’t home yet, and I planned to leave you a message on the machine.”

“Do we have someone?” I asked, which is a polite way of asking if we have a new corpse. Otis and Odell don’t like for any of the workers to refer to dead bodies except by name or living terms.

“Yes, and you know her. Bill’s wife Molly’s Aunt Nina Gorman died earlier this evening, but I got tied up at the fairgrounds, and the sheriff told me you’d gone to the hospital because Rizzie’s Maum fell. I wound up taking the man who was killed at the fairgrounds to Charleston for a post mortem, and I’m sorry but this is the first chance I’ve had to call you.”

“Molly’s aunt? We were at a bridal shower for Bill and Molly at the little old ladies’ house not long before the wedding. They were precious and still looked alike, not like you and Otis.”

“I know. I went to that shower.”

“Is the sister coming in at eight to make arrangements?” Ten is about as early as anyone ever has a planning conference at Middleton’s. “You won’t prep tonight, will you?” I have filled a chair at a planning session, but making arrangements is usually a job for Otis or Odell, not me.

“I’ll let Nila explain it to you. Just be there and be on time.” He harrumphed, which he does often. “How is Mrs. Profit?”

“Not good at all. She has a broken hip and wrist as well as a heart condition they just discovered.”

“Come in early, and as soon as you finish with the Gormans, you can go over and spend some time with Rizzie at the hospital.”

“Thanks, Odell.”

I disconnected the phone and returned to
The PyraMorians
. Big Boy settled back beside the bed. I’d just gotten into the book when the phone rang again.

This time I didn’t jump. I just reached over and answered it.

“Hello.”

“Calamine? This is your pa.”

Like I don’t know my own father’s voice, and like anyone besides him calls me Calamine.

“Yes, Daddy, how are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you sticking to your diet and walking each day?”

“I am a grown man, and I can follow my doctor’s orders without my six young’uns thinking they’ve got to check up on me. Even Jim called me from the Middle East to ask me what I ate for breakfast one day last week.” Jim’s my next to oldest brother, two years younger than John, and he’s career Navy, so we don’t see him often.

“Don’t get upset, Daddy. It’s not good for your heart.”

“Then don’t tell me what to do. I talked to Frankie, and he says Rizzie’s gramma’s in the hospital. How is she?”

I went through the whole thing again.

“I called you at midnight, and you weren’t home. Where were you?”

“I’m grown, too, Daddy.” Then I thought about his heart condition. No point in getting him riled up. “I may have been out with Big Boy for a bathroom break.”

“It’s not good for a girl to be out so late, not even in your own front yard. You should just move back in with Mike and me.”

No point in arguing with Daddy. I faked a yawn and claimed to be sleepy. After mutual goodbyes, I settled back into the pillows with David Lee Jones’s book and a fresh MoonPie. Only problem was that as good as MoonPies are, they’re a treat that needs something to wet your whistle. I went back to the kitchen to look for something to drink—preferably a Diet Coke. Big Boy followed and parked himself smack in front of the cupboard that held the banana MoonPies. I really need to buy him some of those doggy snack bones or fake bacon, but he sure loves banana MoonPies. The empty refrigerator didn’t yield Cokes nor anything else to drink, so I settled for instant hot chocolate with tiny little dried up marshmallows and treated Big Boy to just one more MoonPie.

As soon as I was settled back under the covers with my book and snacks, the phone rang again. I threw the book across the room like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. “Hello!” I snapped.

“Callie?” I immediately took one of those guilt trips I swear I don’t take. The caller was Rizzie. “Can you come get Tyrone and take him home? The head nurse called. Maum was unresponsive, but it wasn’t a heart attack. It was reaction to the medicine. Tyrone and I came back to the hospital, and they’d done some kind of rapid response thing and had her awake. We’ve talked with her, and she’s gone back to sleep.” She sobbed, then continued, “I was going to take Tyrone home because he needs sleep so he won’t miss school tomorrow.” Her breath hitched. “Callie, I’ve wrecked the van.”

“Where are you?” I asked as I pulled off the flannel gown and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt.

“Right here in the medical center parking lot. I accidentally hit the accelerator and rammed the Econoline against a light post. The whole front end is smashed.”

“Are you or Tyrone hurt?”

“No, we both had our seat belts on, so we’re just shook up, but I really want to get Tyrone away from here. He’s even more upset.”

“I’m on the way. Go back in and sit in the waiting room.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to wait for a wrecker to move the van out of the way. The officer who came suggested a service he says is cheap.”

“I’ll be there as fast as possible.”

“Don’t say that. Just drive carefully and don’t have an accident.”

Big Boy never potties during the night, but now that I was in a hurry, he had to go outside. I refused to walk him. Just let him squat like he always does, then put him back in the apartment. As a last thought, I grabbed the box with the rest of the MoonPies and took them with me.

• • •

I saw the flames and heard the sirens before I reached the parking lot. Even in the middle of the night, several people had gathered around, though at what they thought was a safe distance. Personally, I think the safe distance from a burning vehicle is in the next county. Rizzie and Tyrone were sitting on the curb by the ER door. Through the glass doors, I could see hospital personnel as well as patients waiting to be seen, and people kept stepping around Rizzie and Tyrone to go in and out. I parked way out at the edge of the lot and walked over to them. There wasn’t any doubt that the blazing vehicle was Rizzie’s. The magnetic “Gastric Gullah” sign was on the side.