The Devil Makes Three (9 page)

“Gretchen?”

I looked up to find my father standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You don’t work tonight.”

For a lack of a better excuse I pulled the bible from the shelf and held it up. “Just looking for some light reading.”

My father walked up the aisle slowly and sat down on the first pew. “The bible?”

“Yeah. Light reading. Get it? Ha ha.”

“Is something wrong dear? You seem a bit out of sorts. You’ve slept on the job quite a bit, lately. That’s not like you.”

“How do you know?”

“Robert tells me you look like you’ve just woken up every morning you’ve answered the gate for him this week.”

Robert ratted me out? We’re going to have words. “It just gets so boring around here.”

“Perhaps we should work out some other arrangement. I know this isn’t your dream job.”

“I don’t have a dream job.”

He patted the bench next to him and I took the seat, sliding the bible underneath my leg so he wouldn’t see the envelope.

“But something has you sleeping on the job. Is it a man?”

I grimaced. This wasn’t exactly the conversation I wanted to have with my father. “No. There’s no man.”

“Maybe there should be.”

I glanced at him then back up at the pulpit. The ghosts seemed to have vanished. All except for one. Maren sat there, staring at us from the pew behind the pulpit. “It’s not like there isn’t any man. There’s one or two that I’m interested in.” Too bad I didn’t know the exact number. “But I’m not really ready to pursue anything serious right now. I just want to finish school.”

“What about friends?”

“I just want to finish school, Dad.”

“Okay. No pressure. We just worry about you. You seem so… cut off from everything sometimes. You know this job only exists for insurance purposes. With the money we pay you we could always just take the higher insurance rates and you could find something with normal hours.”

“Yeah. Mom wouldn’t throw too much of a fit. You know she’s not happy if she can’t regulate at least one meal a day and monitor my income. Besides, I don’t think I’d like the typical employment styles of micro-management.”

“Probably not. But you never know. The option is always there.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Just so we’re clear. For now, if you’re here, it’s because you want to be here.”

“Yes.” For now. Until he decided to retire and forced me into the position of professional griever.

“Then I need you here. Really here. Awake and alert. Not sleeping on the job.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

#

When I got back to my apartment I slipped the envelope from my bag and carried it into my bedroom. I changed into the red pajamas, stuck the envelope under my pillow and climbed beneath the sheets. For a while I lay, trying hard not to think about what my father and I had discussed. Eventually, I fell asleep realizing I probably should have taken the chance and gotten myself out of the family business for everyone’s sake. If my life continued in this fashion it was very likely I would end up getting caught, since covert crime didn’t really seem my forte. It would ruin my entire life. It would ruin my entire family.

I awoke to find Corbin leaning over me, the light of the moon glittering off his dark eyes. At least I assumed it was Corbin. He wore the leather duster and looked absolutely edible. “Are those tear stains?” He sounded incredulous.

I groaned and sat up. “What are you doing here? How do you keep getting in?”

“Your cat likes me. He unlocks the door.”

“Don’t toy with me.”

“Don’t worry about how I get in. Why were you crying?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

His eyes darkened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean no more. You want to use me as a little delivery girl, fine. But you keep it out of the funeral home. I don’t care where you have me go. The seventh street viaduct. Whatever. Just not at the funeral home. I can’t have my family involved. And you never go there again either.”

He settled on the edge of the bed and leaned over me, pushing me down against the pillow. “Did something happen I should know about?”

“My father almost caught me.”

“I see. I thought he was a busy man while working and my sources tell me the chapel is rarely used in the evening. What possible reason did he have for going in there in the few split seconds you were in there?”

I shrugged guiltily. “I don’t know. Perhaps he saw me go in.”

“I see.” He lowered his face to mine and whispered in my ear. “You’ll have to learn to be more careful. But in the meantime,” he reached out and caressed my check with his fingers, “we’ll keep the funeral home out of things.”

“Thank you.” A pause sat between us for a moment, neither of us moving from our close positions. His fingers continued to caress my skin, making their way down my neck to the soft fabric of my pajamas. My breath caught in my chest as he touched my collar bone. And I could see him smile in the darkness.

The smile ripped me from my haze and I pushed him back, off the bed. “Do you come in here and peer at me often while I’m sleeping? Because if you do I’m going to get a dog to bite your face off. Or better yet, get myself another gun and sleep with it.”

“You never got another gun?”

“I don’t need one. Answer the question.”

“I came in here because I couldn’t find the envelope out there.”

“Oh.” Reaching under the pillow I pulled it out and handed it to him. “And this has to stop too. You can’t keep coming in here.”

“Why?”

“Because people will talk. What will my neighbors think?”

“No one ever sees me. I’m like smoke.”

“Smoke?” I scoffed. “Smoke sets off fire alarms. That causes even bigger scenes.”

He pushed me back down on the bed and held me there. “This continues. Your apartment is a perfectly legitimate place for someone to come see you even if you don’t think so. If someone sees me here, they’re not going to think crime. They’re going to think you actually have a life.”

Anger gathered and I pushed up against him, but he resisted, pinning me to my pillow. “And one more thing,” he said, bending down and whispering in my ear. “If you bring my property to your bed again I’ll take it as an invitation to stay.”

Chapter 9

In which Gretchen opens up both herself and a surprising grave.

I clutched a first, very rough, draft of my research paper in my hands, nervously aware the semester had only been in for a month, and any admittance to my fellow students that I was so far ahead would forever paint me as a suck up. But I couldn’t resist. After our more than slightly tense encounter in the library and pleasant glances and smiles in class I couldn’t just ignore the fact that Professor Collin Cade had given me the perfect alibi for coming to see him in his office hours. Not to mention I had struck upon the idea of trying to make the other personalities come out, if possible.

Standing outside his door I rehearsed what I would say. Yet every time it came out it sounded wrong and I switched it around in my head, muddling myself and raising my heart rate. Finally, I just gave in to panic and knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Turning the knob, I pushed the door open and stepped onto the threshold.

He sat, leaning back at his desk with his feet propped up on the blotter and his laptop on his legs. 

I became consciously aware that I licked my lips at the sight of him. “Hi.”

His face broke into a small smile and his feet hit the rug with a muffled thump. Placing the laptop off to the side of the desk, he motioned for me to sit down. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

I stepped inside, pushing the door shut behind me and taking the chair. I saw his eyes jump to the door with consideration then back to me. Holding out my paper I set it on the desk so he could read the title. “You said you wouldn’t mind looking at my first draft and I’m kind of stuck. I’ve only got about twelve pages and I’ve no clue where to go from here.”

He picked up the paper and glanced at the first page then flipped through the rest. “I’ll take a look at it tonight and should have some suggestions for you tomorrow.”

“Thanks. But I’d prefer it if the others didn’t know I’d gotten this far already. I don’t want to get pegged as a suck up.”

He smiled and my heart melted.

“Don’t worry. Do you have other classes tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“When do you finish up?”

“Around 5:00, depending how long-winded Kartchner is feeling.”

He laughed quietly. “Don’t you love those self-important professors who think they know everything?”

“Personally I could do without them. But it’s a credit.”

His smile faded slightly and he shook his head. “Graduation. That all you’re here for?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m here for. My life has a fairly set course to it, but I’m not particularly interested in taking it up right now.”

“What course might that be?”

“The family business. Which I’m not interested in. I should really take business courses if I’m not going into the medical field, but neither appeal to me. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the only child to inherit, thus the problem will become mine someday.”

“What’s the business?”

Here came my chance. I wasn’t naïve. I was well aware of how weird it always sounded to people that I’m connected to a funeral home. So weird in fact, that I hoped it would trigger something in him, bringing out the beast. Or beasts. “We own Tanner Family Funeral Home and Cemetery. Have you heard of it?”

“A funeral home?” His eyebrows rose and his tone gave away his inner appraisal of my situation.

“Yeah. And since I don’t want to become a mortician I should probably at least become an expert in business.” I kept steady eye contact, hoping for some sign someone else might come home to roost, but suffered disappointment by his lack of significant response. “What’s that tone supposed to mean?” I took a chance with a bit of sass to see where it would lead.

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It just explains a lot about you.”

“That I’m surrounded by dead people?”

“Are you? You’ve just given me the impression you don’t contribute to the business as of yet.”

“Oh. Well I do some stuff at the funeral home, but I don’t have first hand contact with the dead.” Not ethically or legally anyway. In the last month I had robbed over seventeen graves and sold more than a $500.00 worth of trinkets.

“And that’s why you’re so passé about everything? You act like nothing matters. It’s all just a credit, a means to an end. Where will that end get you?”

“I’ll get to say I have a degree.”

“But who will you tell? Your future employment seems fairly set and besides a few morticians and all the dead people, who is in your life?”

“I’m kind of lost as to where this conversation is going.” I said, moving to the edge of my chair, suddenly aware of the uncomfortable knot in my stomach. The last thing I wanted was to get therapy from a nutcase.

He leaned forward over the edge of his desk and put out a hand as if he could calm me by a simple gesture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You sound like a shrink. Not that I would know what a shrink sounds like.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I just think that perhaps you’re in school for the wrong reason. School’s about getting a degree, yes. But more importantly, it’s about gaining knowledge, growing and developing. It’s about finding out who you really want to become as an adult. At least, that’s my opinion. The way you talk about it, it’s like you think you’re a martyr or something. And you’re so… not above, but beyond, everyone around you.”

“What about you? Am I supposed to believe you’re a picture of mental health? Are you the most social of butterflies? How many people you got in that head?” It came out before I could stop myself and I bit my lip, hoping I hadn’t gone overboard and provoked something from him.

He leaned back in his chair with a wry smile and shook his head. “There’s only one person in here, and no, I’m not a social butterfly. I’m a thirty-one-year-old professor of criminology. I’ve done nothing but school for many years now.”

“Yeah? Why Crim?” It had bothered me for a while. Each personality had something to do with crime. One solved the crime while another committed it with a third studying both aspects.

He shrugged and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Honestly? I don’t know. I suppose it was the glamour of the subject.”

“Glamour? Seems kind of seedy to me.”

“It’s that too. Also there’s my family.”

Family. That word brought many interesting images to mind and I couldn’t help but pry. “Why? What’s wrong with them? Is your mother a nightmare?”

He smiled. “No. She’s not. Or at least she wasn’t. I have a few siblings who are another story though.”

“Oh? Do tell.” Perhaps it could shed some light on the mysterious three-in-one man, parading through my life.

He met my gaze levelly and gave a slight nod, as if recognizing that he had put me in an uncomfortable position and now it was his turn. “The FBI was one brother’s goal ever since he began watching the X-files on Friday nights. Another… just disappeared one day after my dad had to bail him out of jail. He’s dead now. But the other four seem fairly normal. To an extent.”

“Seven kids?” I couldn’t help my surprise.

He nodded. “Seven. By the time I went off to school only two of us still lived in the house and I let my brother help me pick my schedule for that first semester of higher education. Hence the Crim courses.”

“I see. Are you close to them still?”

“No, not at all. After I went away to school we all drifted apart. I think my father’s second wife has something to do with that, but that’s a completely different story.”

“So now we’re even. You know all about my reasoning behind my academics just like I know about yours.”

I didn’t want to drop the discussion of his family. Was it possible these brothers he mentioned were actually triplets? I didn’t know much about the situation of multiple fetus pregnancies, but I knew enough to know that triplets were rare, even in cases with fertility drugs. Part of me thought about asking him, but then how would I justify knowing of the third brother, if such a man existed? Everything in my past experience with Corbin said this would be a bad idea. He’d made it very clear he didn’t want the others alerted to his existence.