SEVENTEEN
Emily was coming in the door from school at the same time we arrived home and she looked as unhappy as I felt.
“Where were you guys?” she snarled as she dropped her backpack on the dining table.
“Co-op,” I said.
“Mom can’t teach,” Will said, brushing past us on his way to the stairs.
“Yeah, they think she did it,” Sophie said. She’d grabbed a cheese stick from the fridge and was in the process of pulling down the wrapper.
“But she didn’t,” Gracie announced. She looked at me. “Right, Mommy? You didn’t?”
“No, I did not,” I said.
The two girls exchanged looks and Sophie shoved half the cheese stick in her mouth. Grace grabbed the other half out of her hand, popped it in her own mouth and they both scurried upstairs.
“What are they talking about?” Emily asked, slouching into one of the chairs at the table.
She’d done her hair in a French braid that morning and, with her hair pulled back from her face, she looked stunning. Of course, I’d never tell her that. A flattering remark from me was a surefire way to ensure she’d never repeat what had initiated the compliment.
“My class was cancelled,” I told her. “No one signed up.”
She squinted at me. “What? Your classes are the only ones people look forward to.”
“That was before dead bodies started turning up in our basement.”
Emily folded her arms across her chest, chewing on her lip. Her brow furrowed and I could tell she was angry. I just wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened at co-op or if there was some other reason.
I sat down across from her. “How was your day?”
“Terrible,” she said. “Pretty amazingly terrible.”
A knot formed in my stomach. “Why?”
“Remember how I asked about going to the game on Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about it now,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Why not?”
She cleared her throat. “Just because.”
“Emily. Why not?”
Small tears emerged in the corners of her eyes. “Nathan…he said he’s not going to go now.” She paused and winced. “But I think he really is. He just doesn’t want me to go.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. “What do you mean?”
She wiped at her eyes. “Well, he came up to me in history and he asked if I was still going and I said I thought so. And then he said well, I don’t think I’m going now. I asked why and he said something about his dad needing him to do something. It was totally weird and he was all mumbling and he never mumbles because I hate mumbles, but whatever. So I said okay, thanks for telling me or something lame like that.” She paused and she winced like she was being pinched. “But then after lunch, Bailey told me that she heard he was still going and that he told me that just because he didn’t want me go.”
My hand balled into a fist as my mother hen instincts kicked in and I wanted to punch the face of a teenage boy who was being a butthead to my daughter. I knew that dealing with boys was going to be an ongoing process for her and she needed to deal with butthead boys in order grow up, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to grab the little weasel by the nose and tell him to stop being such a butthead.
“Who did Bailey hear that from?” I asked, trying to poke holes in what was hopefully maybe just a rumor. “And why would he say that?”
She wiped at her eyes again and then folded her hands tightly in her lap. “She heard him talking to Josh in math. And he said it was because of the whole dead body thing and it freaked him out.”
The knot in my stomach retied itself.
“He told Josh that he thought it was creepy and he didn’t want to hang out with some serial killer girl,” she said, wincing again.
I forced myself to breathe and unclenched my fist, stretching out my fingers. “Okay. Two things here. One, you are not some serial killer girl.”
“Well, duh.”
“And, two, if he is basing his decision to hang out with you or like you or whatever on something he knows nothing about, then he is not a boy you want to be wasting your time on,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment. I was pleased with my response. It was reasonable, rational. It made sense. I was able to impart a little life wisdom on my daughter and maybe some day she would look back on this conversation and thank me for helping her wade through the cesspool that is teenage boys.
“Thanks for the Disney show advice,” she grumbled, her voice full of disdain.
Or maybe not.
“I don’t want people to be weirded out about hanging out with me,” she said. Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes.
“Is Bailey?”
She thought for a second. “I don’t think so.”
“How about your other friends?” I asked. “Girlfriends, I mean.”
She thought again. “Not that anyone has said, I guess.”
“So your friends aren’t making assumptions,” I said. “They’re still your friends and aren’t jumping to ridiculous conclusions. They’re still your friends.”
She made a non-committal shrug that seemed to be especially teenaged in nature.
I reached out and laid my hand on her forearm. “I’m sorry Nathan is lame. But if that’s really what he said and why he told you he wasn’t going to the game, then he is lame. There are plenty of boys who won’t be lame. And I’m sorry that all of this stuff going on is affecting you. It’s affecting all of us. But it won’t last forever. It will all get sorted out.”
“When?” she asked.
“I can’t answer that,” I said. “Hopefully, sooner rather than later.”
She stood and grabbed her backpack from the table. “Okay.”
“Or we can just have Jake wait for Nathan after school tomorrow and, like, rough him up or something,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Mom.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “He’ll do it. He could hide behind a trash can and jump out and throw him in the back of the car
—”
“Whatever,” she said, her eyeballs doing another lap.
“We could give him some rope—”
“Oh my God,” Emily said. “Stop.”
She hoisted the backpack on her shoulder and headed for her room.
I sat there for a minute. I did believe that if that was indeed what Nathan had said, then he really was a little weasel who no doubt had trouble spelling his own name and wanted nothing more than to get Emily alone behind the bleachers. Or something like that. But it also bothered me that what was going on at home was having an effect on her at school. That wasn’t fair to her. High school and teenage-hood were hard enough without any extra wrinkles. Finding a dead body in your home when you lived in a small time was more than a small wrinkle. It was massive and I felt bad that it was going to make Emily’s classmates whisper about her. I didn’t want her to be known as the serial killer kid.
I thought about what had happened at co-op and how no one had signed up for my class. The other three kids hadn’t been ostracized during sign-ups but maybe that was just around the corner, too. I didn’t know if that would be waiting for us on the first day of co-op and I didn’t want to wait to find out.
I needed to figure out exactly how Olaf ended up in the coal chute. The sooner, the better.
EIGHTEEN
We tried to have a normal family evening.
Jake came home from work and, after a quick dinner of fish sticks and scalloped potatoes, he played a few quick games on the Wii with the younger three while I helped Emily wade through her history assignment. Once we were done, I flipped off the television and told each of the kids to go pick out a game. Our game collection rivaled that of any toy store and our kids had been conditioned to play games at night rather than park themselves in front of one mindless sitcom after another.
We let Emily exempt herself from game playing and she holed up in her room, probably texting or SnapChatting with one of her friends. I didn’t mind—after the day she’d had, she probably needed her friends at that moment more than her squabbling siblings. Games were taken very seriously in our household, especially by the three overly competitive younger kids. Jake and I spent the better part of the remaining evening hours refereeing and arbitrating multiple games. After Will claimed his third victory at Blokus, we finally herded them upstairs and into bed.
Jake and I followed shortly thereafter. Once in bed, huddled under the covers, I shared with him my day and what had happened with Emily at school. He was much more rational and much more matter-of-fact than I was, telling me that kids were going to be jerks no matter what and the sooner Em learned to deal with them, the better. He didn’t panic and he wasn’t worried that she’d be ostracized for the rest of her life.
Like I was.
So after he left the next morning for work and Emily was off to school and the other three kids were occupied with their reading for the morning, I spent some time on the Internet, trying to get a more definitive location on Olga Stunderson’s whereabouts.
I decided to start with her because she creeped me out less than Helen Stunderson did. I was still unnerved about our library confrontation and while I was curious about why she’d showed up there and why she’d clearly lied to me, I wasn’t so sure about confronting her on my own.
Olga, however, I’d already faced off with. And while it hadn’t gone well, she’d at least been honest with me. Even if she had been a bit…unhinged.
So I typed her name into the computer and after a few minutes down the Internet rabbit hole, I had her address. I told the kids I was headed to Wal-Mart, which was a surefire way to make sure they had zero interest in coming with me.
“Lock the door,” Will said as I grabbed my keys. He’d unearthed the cookie container and was shoving a whole one in his mouth.
“Why?”
He wiped the crumbs off his chin. “I don’t want any policemen coming in.”
“Policemen are good.”
He reached for another. “As far as you know. I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
He had a point.
“No more cookies,” I warned.
He just nodded, his expression one of innocence, and polished off the one in his hand.
I shook my head and locked the door behind me. I pulled my coat tight to me and hurried out to the garage and my car, ready to make the drive to the other side of Moose River.
Which meant about six minutes in the car.
I’d recognized the address as soon as I’d pulled it up. It was on the other side of the river, where a lot of new businesses had sprung up as people discovered that Moose River was a good place to live if you had to work in the cities. The commute was manageable, but it still felt far enough away from the urban vibe of Minneapolis. National retailers had crept in—Caribou and Office Max and the aforementioned Wal-Mart—but smaller local businesses had taken root, too. Some people hated it, bemoaning the loss of the small town feel that Moose River had maintained over the last two hundred years, but I was philosophical about it. Sure, big box stores were ugly and soulless, but I wasn’t going to complain that I didn’t have to drive half an hour to get a gallon of milk. Good with the bad and all that.
So I knew roughly where Olga’s house or apartment or whatever she lived in was located.
What I didn’t know was that it was also the address for the Moose River mortuary.
I double-checked the address on my phone as I idled at the curb of the town mortuary.
One and the same.
Weird things get weirder.
I pulled into the small lot and shut off the engine. I’d never been in the Moose River mortuary. It was a long rectangular brick building with thick rows of hedges surrounding it. A half-circle drive sat in front of double glass doors and a small plaque with the name and address was mounted on the wall just to the right of the entrance. There was one other car in the lot, so at least I wasn’t interrupting a service.
I got out and shivered against the cold morning wind. I wondered if the Internet had failed me and just given me a wrong address and all I was going to find were
more
dead bodies. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something.
I pushed in through the glass doors, and the heated air hit me like a brick wall, thick and suffocating. I shrugged off my coat as I stood in the oval vestibule. It was decorated with stately, somber flower arrangements and tastefully arranged, expensive-looking wood tables and chairs. An air freshener hissed from the wall and the scent was something floral mixed with vanilla. It was meant to be soothing but, combined with the excessive heat pumping out of the vents, only served to create overly warmed, perfumed air.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway on the marble floors and I turned in that direction.
Olga slowed when she saw me, her face morphing from a fake smile to an annoyed frown. Her brown hair was plastered with hairspray, a giant wave lifting off and curling over her forehead. The end of her hair was curled in the opposite direction, the whole effect looking like some sort of ski ramp on top of her head. I didn’t detect much makeup on her face, but the centers of her cheeks were just as pink as they’d been when we’d wrestled in the snow. She wore a gray turtleneck sweater beneath a navy blazer and slacks that matched the blazer and emphasized her wide hips. Older brown flats carried her to a stop a few feet away from me.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I was hoping we could talk,” I said, bracing myself in case she charged.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she said. “Unless you’re here to confess.”
“I’m not here to confess. I didn’t kill your brother.”
“Oh, baloney.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She folded her arms across her ample chest.
I took her silence as a yes.
“If I killed Olaf, why would I have left his body in my home?” I said. “Don’t you think I would’ve tried to hide him or something?”
She blinked, but didn’t say anything.
“I met your brother one time,” I said, holding up my index finger. “We had a very nice night. But I never spoke to him again. I never saw him again. And I didn’t hurt him or kill him or do anything else to him.”
She blinked again several times until tears sprouted in the corners of her eyes like tiny ice cubes. “Oh, horse pucky.”
Then she sat down in one of the expensive looking chairs and cried for five solid minutes.
I stood there for the first few minutes, unsure what to do with myself. Then I sat down in the chair next to her and gently put my arm around her shoulders, still wary in case she decided to hit me with an uppercut. But, instead, she leaned into me and cried even harder.
Olga was a professional cryer. She didn’t hold anything back and by the time she was done, her eyes were red and swollen, her nose was dripping everywhere and my shoulder was soaked in tears and snot.
Which, as a mom, I had plenty of experience with and wasn’t grossed out by.
When she was nearly dehydrated, she stood and walked over to a massive flower arrangement on a small table. She reached behind the flowers and pulled out a small package of tissues. She put one to her nose and blew with the force and noise of a large goose. She wadded up the tissue and dropped it in the wastebasket.
“I have them hidden everywhere,” she said. “You can never have enough of them in a funeral home.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing another tissue and dabbing at her eyes and mottled cheeks. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure it’s hard.”
She nodded. “Yes. It is. I miss my brother terribly.”
I nodded, glad that she no longer seemed interested in harming me physically.
“And I’m sorry about the…incident outside your home,” she said, her eyes flitting in my direction. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“It’s over and done with,” I said. “I’m sorry, too.”
She nodded and wiped at her eyes. “Would you like some coffee? I was about to go get some upstairs.”
I stood. “Sure.”
I followed her down a long hallway decorated with more flowers and pictures of beaches and nature, more feeble attempts to be soothing for those in mourning. We passed a room that looked like a receiving or reception area and then approached a flight of stairs. I followed her up them and around a corner to a door wedged into an A-frame.
“I got the job here a little over a year ago,” she explained, twisting the knob. “Lucky for me, the small apartment was vacant and mine for the taking.”
“Um, yes, lucky,” I said.
The small apartment had polished wood floors, a worn green couch and lots and lots of clowns.
Clowns.
There were framed pictures of clowns. There were figurines of clowns. There were stuffed clowns. There were happy clowns. There were sad clowns. There were super scary clowns that looked like they wanted to murder the other clowns.
Clowns.
I might have gasped in horror. Loudly.
Olga must’ve noticed me looking around the room because she said, “I like clowns.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling like all the clowns were watching me. “I can…see that.”
“I’ve liked them since I was a kid,” she said, walking over to a small kitchen counter and flicking the switch on a small coffee maker. “Olaf did, too. We actually both had done some amateur clowning.”
“Clowning?”
“Well, we didn’t go to clown school,” she explained. “It was too expensive. But we started experimenting with makeup and playing around. We did kids parties as a part-time job when we were in high school.”
Weird. Olaf hadn’t mentioned his interest in clowning on our dinner date. Probably because I would’ve run screaming from the restaurant.
“I still do the occasional party or carnival,” Olga said, pulling two mugs from the cabinet. “But only by referral.”
I had no idea what that meant. “Of course.”
“Sit.”
“Excuse me?”
She motioned to the couch. “Sit down.”
“In there?” I asked.
She stared at me like I was mentally disabled. “Yes, in there. On the couch. With the clowns.”
I forced my feet to move and stared down at the floor as I walked so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with any of the murderous-looking clowns.
“I’ve actually found that it helps with doing make up for the services here at the mortuary,” she explained, continuing the conversation.
“Uh, what?”
She watched the coffee drip from the pot. “When a person is brought here, one of my jobs is to prepare them for their service. Most people require a fair amount of makeup. So some of my clowning experience has paid off.”
“That’s…nice,” I said because “That’s really friggin’ weird” would’ve been rude.
She poured coffee into each of the mugs and brought them over. She handed me mine and I clutched it in my hands as she took a seat on the sofa next to me. She gestured to the cream and sugar on the center of the coffee table, but I shook my head.
“I spent last night with Olaf,” she said, blowing on the surface of her coffee.
I tried not to drop mine. “What?”
“He’s here,” she said, then she pointed to the floor. “Downstairs. They brought his body over here yesterday.”
“Oh,” I said, even though that explained nothing.
She stared into her coffee, her eyes wrinkling, threatening to spit tears again. “I knew he was down there. So I grabbed a blanket and went and slept next to his drawer. It was just like when we were kids. Except he wasn’t snoring because he’s dead.”
Really. Friggin’. Weird.
“I’m sorry,” I said because I literally couldn’t think of one other single thing to say to that.
She waved a hand in the air. “I’m just overly emotional. It’s probably why I attacked you the other day.”
Probably.
She took a long sip from her coffee and it seemed to steady her. She took a deep breath and leaned back into the couch. “You know, Olaf really enjoyed his date with you.”
I smiled at her. “We had a very nice time.”
“He wanted to ask you out again,” she said. “I mean, before that other man came into your life.”
I wondered if she’d been keeping tabs on me for awhile. And I wondered why she’d referred to Jake as ‘that other man’ with barely concealed venom.