Startled, Vera whirled around, suffering a bout of lightheadedness for her effort. “Hey.” She steadied herself. The sudden movement had sent a blast of pain through her skull. A wince constricted her face before she could stop it. Then she frowned. Why was Eve dressed in a business suit? Where were her scrubs? “I thought you were working.”
“I am.” Eve grabbed Vera by the arm and pulled her toward the lobby. “I don’t have a lot of time, so you’ll have to talk while I prepare.”
“Okay.” The fast pace was not working well with Vera’s overall physical condition, but she kept her mouth shut and allowed her sister to drag her along. What the hell was she preparing for?
Eve ushered her into a parlor and quickly closed the collapsable door that separated it from the long corridor. There were about a half dozen of these “parlors” along the corridor. At least two had those same collapsable doors between them for opening up into larger spaces for thevisitorswho had more friends and family than a single space would hold.
Vera grimaced when she noticed a casket surrounded by more of those unpleasant smelling flower arrangements on the far side of the room. Chairs and sofas lined the rest of the space. Tissue boxes sat on side tables and, of course, that sad music played softly. Eve hurried around the room, checking that all was as it should be. She was in her element—perfectly at home.
Funerals were Eve’s thing. Vera just didn’t get it. She frowned, making her head hurt all the more. Her sister wasn’t usually a part of this aspect of the business. Her work was behind the scenes—preparing her visitors for their last hurrah.
At her questioning look, Eve said, “We’re shorthanded. I have to host this visitation. Which starts in a few minutes, so talk fast.”
That made sense, Vera supposed.
Eve adjusted a floral arrangement. “Luna called,” she said when Vera remained mute. “Mr. Andrews came through the surgery. He’s in stable condition, but they won’t know how he’s going to do until he wakes up. I was supposed to let you know, but I got busy.”
Vera snapped out of the near coma she’d lapsed into. Good grief. The day was practically over, and she hadn’t taken a moment to wonder how Luna’s father-in-law was doing. “That’s good news.”
Eve’s scurry around the room concluded at the casket. She unlocked it and then opened one half, revealing the prepared visitor inside. Hoping Eve would be still for a few minutes, Vera joined her there.She put extra effort into not staring at the woman in the glittery pink box. When had they started adding sparkles to the paint on caskets? Just too weird.
“What’s wrong with you?” Eve surveyed her from head to toe and back. “You look terrible, and you’re acting like you’re drunk.”
Vera supposed she did. The jeans and tee weren’t exactly proper attire when she wasn’t working from home. But then she hadn’t dressed this morning for leaving the house. “Someone popped in this morning and hit me with ...” It hurt to recall that moment. “I don’t know what. The weapon wasn’t found. Anyway, the blow put me down, and now I have a concussion. I can’t drive or run that marathon I had planned. Bent dropped me here so I could talk to you.”
“Someone broke in at the farm? You didn’t have the alarm set?” Eve stopped tidying the satin lining around the edge of the now-open casket.
“I disarmed it because I had a visitor.” She frowned. “Not your kind of visitor—a person of interest in the case. We’re not sure at this point if someone else came in after I unlocked the door.” She shrugged, grimaced when the move affected her head. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Luna.”
Eve held up her hands stop-sign fashion. “First, you tell me what the hell is going on.” She glanced at the corpse in the coffin as if to say,Excuse me. “What marathon were you planning to run?”
With all that was happening just now—Luna’s mother-in-law dead at the bottom of her stairs, her father-in-law in intensive care after major heart surgery, and three dead as well as another on the verge of death, not to mention this damned concussion—the silly marathon remark is what got her sister’s attention?
“There’s no marathon, Eve, I was ... anyway, I’m helping Bent with the triple homicide out at the Wilton place. One of the persons of interest stopped by the house, and while we were talking someone ambushed me or us.” Sounded pretty amateurish on Vera’s part to be caught off guard like that, but it was the way it happened.
A frown furrowed deeply into Eve’s face. “You must have really made somebody angry.”
Wow. No sympathy here. Obviously if she was conked on the head, it was her fault.
“Probably.” Why argue? Besides, it was the nature of the beast in her chosen profession. “I’m not here to talk about that. I’m worried about Luna.”
“She seemed okay when we talked.” Eve finished tidying the liner. “She called about an hour ago and said she was heading home.”
“She’s driving back alone?”
Eve shot her another of those looks. “She’s done it a million times. She’ll be fine.”
Vera looked around to ensure they were alone. They were except for the dead woman. Vera frowned again. “Is that Mrs. Ingle?” The woman had been her and Eve’s art teacher back in middle school.
“Yes.” Eve patted the corpse’s cold, dead crossed hands. “She was such a good teacher.”
Vera’s frown deepened. “All I remember is the way she used those wooden paintbrush handles to smack me on the back of the hand when she caught me talking.”
Eve glowered at her. “Why were you talking in class?”
“Because I was a kid. That’s what kids do.”
“Ignore her, Mrs. Ingle. She still has a disrespectful streak.”
