And the pastor, of course.
Daisy flicked on the lights to her room, and Cordelia took in the scene. The walls were painted a soft pink with a cabbage-rose border. Matching pink shag carpeting covered the floor. Cordelia felt like a genie trapped inside a Pepto Bismol bottle. The marble-topped vanity housed a charming perfume bottle collection, a bouquet of roses waiting to be clipped and placed in the heart-shaped vase next to them, and a bottle of wine and one glass.
Daisy had a mini fridge, a small icebox freezer, a hot plate, and a microwave. A three-panel wooden partition painted with peacocks separated a small sitting area from the king-size bed. Lingerie in silks and lace, jewel-bright tones and muted blacks, were thrown over the top of the partition, and the satin sheets on the bed were a deep mauve.
And in the middle of the massive bed lay Pastor Reed-Smythe, a sheet pulled up to his neck, dead as a doornail.
Belinda Sue stood over the pastor, wearing a black rubber catsuit and six-inch stilettos with spikes on the heels. She poked at his knee, his arm, and his neck with the tip of a wire hanger. He didn’t move. She swatted his thigh. Nothing.
She tossed the hanger to the side. “Welp. He’s dead, all right.”
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” Daisy tucked her mouselike hands under her chin, her mascara creating sooty tracks down her cheeks. “What are we gonna do, Miss Cordelia?”
Cordelia crossed her arms as she thought over the options in front of them. She didn’t know how she’d been put in charge of this operation. Her degree didn’t have anything to do with bioremediation. “We ought to close his eyes.”
Daisy nodded, her blond beehive bobbing with the motion. “Good idea.”
The four of them looked at one another, silent and nervous as flies in a glue pot. No one wanted to make the first move. Unable to stand the mounting tension a moment longer, Cordelia marched over to the pastor’s body. “This is well above my pay grade, y’all.”
The pastor appeared gentle in death. Gone were the traces of the stern man who had been her neighbor for the first ten years of her life, who told his son to stay away from “that West girl” as if he hadn’t been raising Satan’s spawn under his own roof. As a child banned from church and ultimately deciding religion wasn’t a necessity, Cordelia hadn’t thought much about him over the years, but now she couldn’t help noticing just how much he resembled his son. No wonder Sunday services had been so popular with the ladies in town.
She pushed the pastor’s eyelids closed with the pads of her fingers. The room released a collective wheeze.
“That’s already much better.” Belinda Sue clapped her hands,a loud crack that made the hair on Cordelia’s arms rise. “Who wants to grab his feet?”
Cordelia choked. “Pardon me? Why on earth would we be grabbing his feet? We need to call the police.”
“And tell them what, exactly?” Belinda Sue fixed her gimlet eyes on Cordelia. If Belinda Sue had been holding a ruler, Cordelia was certain the back of her hand would’ve gotten a thwap. “Do you think the pastor wants it known that his heart gave out in Daisy’s room?”
Daisy began to cry harder. “If I’d known he was having heart troubles, I would’ve been gentler with him. He was always so kind to me. We can’t let it get out that he was here. He deserves to be buried with his dignity intact.”
Cordelia moved closer to Daisy and awkwardly patted her shoulder. It was the first time Cordelia had felt this protective toward another living being since she had stolen a chicken set to be butchered from the county fair when she was five. She’d hidden him in her closet and got a serious tongue-lashing when her momma discovered the puddles of poop and peck marks on the walls. Her momma shooed the chicken out of the house, where it ran into the street and promptly got run over by the mailman. After that, Cordelia did her best not to get attached.
Daisy had a way about her though. Cordelia had never met someone who had so few reservations about how much she craved affection. Although Cordelia wasn’t in the habit of handing it out, Daisy made her want to try.
“Well?” Belinda Sue tapped the toe of her stiletto against the plush shag carpeting. “Are we moving him or not?”
Cordelia released a resigned sigh. The Chickadee might’ve been an institution that did a lot of good for the locals, but the nature of the pastor’s death would be far too salacious for the townto just let pass. He’d be made a mockery of for years to come, and seeing as how he was dead, it wouldn’t touch him none. It would all blow back on his family and Daisy.
“Let’s start by sitting him up to see what we’re dealing with here.” Cordelia had heard dead bodies could weigh a ton, but since this was her first time handling one, she didn’t know if this would require all hands on deck. Surely, it would be easier to move the pastor through town without everyone in tow.
“If you sit him up, his eyes are gonna pop back open,” Arline said.
“For heaven’s sake.” Belinda Sue threw her hands in the air. “He’s not a babydoll.”
Arline shrugged and pressed her lips together. With Daisy too distraught and Arline too uninterested to participate, it fell to Cordelia and Belinda Sue to lift the pastor into a sitting position. They each took a side, grabbed an arm, and heaved him forward. Daisy released an earsplitting scream, and Cordelia and Belinda Sue immediately let go. His body hit the mattress with a dull thud, the springs creaking from his weight.
“Told ya.” Arline cackled.
“Fine.” Cordelia pressed a hand to her chest to catch her breath. “It’s probably better if his eyes stay open anyway if we’re going to move him elsewhere and act like he was alone.”
Daisy nibbled on the fist she had pressed to her mouth. “I can’t touch him if he’s staring at me like that. It’s not right.”
“Here.” Belinda Sue yanked one of the satin cases off a pillow. “We’ll put this over his head. Then we can pretend we’re just hauling a sack of grain.”
“I didn’t grow up on a ranch like you did.” Daisy rocked back on her heels. “I don’t know what it feels like to haul grain.”
“Well, here’s your chance to learn.” Belinda Sue covered thepastor’s head, then motioned for Cordelia to take her place on his opposite side, while Daisy and Arline had to be coaxed into grabbing his ankles.
