Casket Case Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Momentarily transported . . .

  “I really just want to get in bed and cry,” Mrs. Dawkins said, “but I think I should wait with Mel until you take him to the funeral home.” She pulled the short robe closer around her slender frame and headed out the door. I’d bet that she was commando under that cover-up. I was trailing behind her when a woman’s scream cut through the night like a surgeon’s scalpel through flesh.

  What now? I thought. If this were one of the mysteries I read, someone would have stolen Melvin’s body. No time to speculate. I dashed out, almost expecting the body to have disappeared, but Dr. Melvin still floated in the hot tub. The screaming came from Mrs. Dawkins, and she wasn’t yelling about her husband. Near the split-rail fence at the edge of the yard stood a very good-looking dude.

  Ex-cuuze me. I was on a pickup call for the funeral home to transport a man I’d known and liked my whole life. What was I doing thinking about how handsome this stranger was?

  PRAISE FOR A Tisket, a Tasket, a Fancy Stolen Casket

  “Colorful characters, corpses, and stolen caskets—this mystery has them all.”

  —Maggie Sefton, author of Fleece Navidad

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Fran Rizer

  A TISKET, A TASKET, A FANCY STOLEN CASKET

  HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE, THE CORPSE AND THE FIDDLE

  CASKET CASE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  CASKET CASE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / October 2008

  Copyright © 2008 by Fran Rizer.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-425-22428-1

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design

  are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This one is for my friend Nynaeve and for all the Callie Parrish fans I’ve met through e-mail and at book signings, readings, and presentations. It’s also for the wonderful people who keep readers and writers happy—booksellers and librarians!

  Acknowledgments

  More special thanks to special people—Jeff Gerecke, agent, and all the people at Berkley Prime Crime who are involved with Callie’s books, especially my marvelous new editor Michelle Vega and my super copy-editor Sheila Moody.

  I also appreciate the advice, encouragement, and information from Calhoun Goodwin, Gwen and Rod Hunter, Leonard Jolley, and Ray Wade.

  Chapter One

  Melvin Dawkins floated facedown in the steamy, bubbling water of the hot tub. As I looked down at him, I noticed that the bodice of my black dress lay flat against my chest.

  Dalmation! I’d dressed so quickly when the call came in the middle of the night that I’d forgotten my bra, and my inflatable underwear is my bosom. I directed my attention back to Dr. Melvin.

  Nekkid as a jaybird. Not that blue jays are any more nude—or is it nuder?—than other birds, but Daddy used that expression all the time when I was growing up, and it was the first thing that popped into my mind that night out in Dr. Melvin’s backyard.

  Next thing I thought, I said aloud. “Where’s the coroner?”

  “What do you mean?” asked the slender, red-haired lady standing on the wooden deck surrounding the tub. She pulled her eyelet cover-up tighter across her middle and retied the sash. “If you can’t get him out by yourself,” she continued, “I’ll help you. I never figured Middleton’s Mortuary would send a girl out by herself to pick up the body.”

  Girl? Puh-leeze. I’m almost thirty-three years old, and thanks to my inflatable bra, I’m way more than thirty-three in the bust. At least when I don’t get waked up in the middle of the night and forget to put it on. I’m not a girl; I’m a woman. A lady trained by the Middleton twins to always be polite and patient with customers, even if some woman younger than I am just called me a girl.

  “I mean that someone has to pronounce a person dead before we can transport the deceased to the funeral home.” I used my best, most comforting, Funeralese tone. “And by the way, where is Mrs. Dawkins? I’d like to speak t
o the person who called.”

  The woman sniffed. Not a tearful sniffle, a sniff of disdain. “I am Mrs. Dawkins, and I called Middleton’s Mortuary,” she said. “The person who answered the phone didn’t say one word about contacting someone else. I called and told her to come get Mel as soon as I found him. I gave her pacific directions.” She pointed toward the hot tub. “You work for the funeral home and you can’t tell he’s not alive? I’ve never seen a corpse out of a casket before and I know he’s dead!”

  I was busy trying to determine what pacific directions she could give me on the South Carolina coast of the Atlantic Ocean. She must have meant “specific.”

  “Was Dr. Melvin under Hospice care?” I said. “If he was, his Hospice nurse can take care of the paperwork.”

  She shook her head no and asked, “Why do you call him ‘doctor’? Melvin was a pharmacist, not a doctor.”

  “You must not have grown up around here,” I said. “All of us kids in St. Mary called him ‘Doctor’ Melvin when we were growing up. I don’t really know why. That’s just what my daddy told me to call him. Anyway, if Dr. Melvin wasn’t under Hospice care, the coroner has to come.”

  “Then why did you suggest that nurse?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” In the Low Country of South Carolina, terminally ill patients who’ve been under Hospice care can be pronounced dead by the Hospice nurse. A few months back, I’d heard that Dr. Melvin had retired from the St. Mary Pharmacy. I didn’t know if he left because of illness, but if the shoe doesn’t fit, no need to try to wear it.

  I fumbled in my purse for my cell phone before realizing I’d forgotten it again. “May I use your telephone?” I reached toward the redhead.

  “Don’t have one out here. I called you from the kitchen. Come on, we’ll go in the house.” She looked at Dr. Melvin again. His silver hair swirled around on the bubbly waves like a child’s finger painting. “Do you think we should pull him out before we go in?”

  “No, ma’am. We have to leave him where he is.”

  There I was. In trouble again for not following instructions. I knew better, I promise I knew better than to go for a body pickup alone during the middle of the night. Well, actually in the wee hours of the morning.

  My bosses, Otis and Odell Middleton, had left me in charge of Middleton’s Mortuary for three days while they went to Atlanta for an undertakers’ seminar. They’d be back before we opened the next day. Otis had told me I could transfer the phone to my apartment each night, but I was supposed to call Jake, one of our part-time drivers, if we had a pickup call.

  Instead, I’d chosen to take the funeral coach, Funeralese for hearse, myself, thinking I could prove my abilities. Never crossed my mind to question what authorities would be at the Dawkins home. Now Sheriff Harmon would know I’d goofed, and he’d tell the Middletons.

  Mrs. Dawkins pushed her damp hair away from her forehead and sighed. A long, loud sigh. I couldn’t tell if the sound was to bring my attention from my thoughts back to the situation or to express her feelings. She turned and walked up the inlaid stone path to the back door of the house.

  The paving stones were patterned with little mosaic roosters on them. I followed her into a tidy kitchen decorated with more roosters. I mean everywhere. Wallpaper, canisters, dishcloths, even one of those half-circle rugs in front of the sink with a big rooster on it. Roosters printed on everything.

  Only one thing in the kitchen was more predominant than those roosters: baked goods. Pies, cakes, platters of cookies, and loaves of home-baked breads covered the table and countertops. All wrapped in Saran Wrap. “Do you like to bake?” I asked conversationally. Duh.

  “No, Mel bakes.” Her answer was short and clipped. “There’s the phone.” She pointed toward an old black AT&T rotary, probably been on the wall since the fifties or sixties. I dialed 9—click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click—1—click—1—click. Lined up on the counter beneath the telephone, bottles and jars of vitamins and food supplements filled four rows. Must have been thirty or forty containers of pills and powders.

  After reporting what might be an accidental drowning, although Dr. Melvin could just as well have suffered a massive stroke or heart attack, I asked Mrs. Dawkins if she’d prefer to wait inside the house or go back outside with me.

  It seemed disrespectful to leave Dr. Melvin alone. He’d filled all the prescriptions for nasty pink medicine when I was a child, and he’d sold me the girly things my brothers and Daddy refused to go for when I reached adolescence. He’d handled much of what my mother would have if she hadn’t died when I was born.

  “I really just want to get in bed and cry,” Mrs. Dawkins said, “but I think I should wait with Mel until you take him to the funeral home.” She pulled the short robe closer around her slender frame and headed out the door. I’d bet that she was commando under that cover-up. I was trailing behind her when a woman’s scream cut through the night like a surgeon’s scalpel through flesh.

  What now? I thought. If this were one of the mysteries I read, someone would have stolen Melvin’s body. No time to speculate. I dashed out, almost expecting the body to have disappeared, but Dr. Melvin still floated. The screaming came from Mrs. Dawkins, and she wasn’t yelling about her husband. Near the split-rail fence at the edge of the yard stood a very good-looking dude.

  Ex-cuuze me. I was on a pickup call for the funeral home to transport a man I’d known and liked my whole life. What was I doing thinking about how handsome this stranger was? Must have been hormonal. Then I realized Mrs. Dawkins wasn’t just screeching. She was yelling words: “What are you doing here?”

  The man stepped forward, closer to us. “What’s happened?” he asked in a smooth voice with a heavy Charleston drawl and motioned toward the hot tub.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, Mrs. Dawkins burst into sobs with giant teardrops pouring from her dark green eyes. “Mel and I were relaxing in the Jacuzzi. I went in the house to get some wine, and when I came back out, he looked like he does now. I knew he was dead, and I didn’t know what to do. There’s only one funeral home listed in the phone book for St. Mary. I called them. Now this woman says the sheriff and coroner have to come before she can take Mel out of the tub.”

  “That makes sense,” the stranger said, “but did you check his pulse when you found him like this?”

  “I held his wrist, but I didn’t feel anything. That’s why I didn’t call 911. Just look at my poor Mel. He was exactly like that when I came out. I could tell he was dead or I wouldn’t have called a funeral home.”

  The man walked to the hot tub, bent over, and lifted Dr. Melvin’s arm. He held the wrist more than a minute, then felt Dr. Melvin’s carotid artery. He shook his head no at Mrs. Dawkins before turning his attention toward me. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Callie Parrish. I work for Middleton’s Mortuary, and I thought that Mr. Dawkins had already been pronounced and was ready to be picked up. I’ve called for the sheriff and the coroner.”

  “I’m Levi Pinckney, a friend of Roselle’s from Charleston. I stopped when I drove by and saw the hearse.”

  “What are you doing in St. Mary and why were you driving by my house?” Mrs. Dawkins interrupted. She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.

  “I came down here a few weeks ago, and I drive by sometimes because it makes me feel better about you. I guess I’m behaving like a jerk, worrying about you all the time.”

  Before Levi continued, Sheriff Harmon stepped through the gate. Jed Amick, the coroner of St. Mary, who has an amazing resemblance to Ichabod Crane, shuffled in right behind him.

  “Callie,” the sheriff said, “where’s Otis or Odell?”

  “They’ve gone to Georgia and left me in charge. They’ll be back tomorrow. Well, since it’s past midnight, they’ll be back later this morning. Dr. Melvin’s over there in the hot tub.” I pointed. Jed sauntered over and peered at Dr. Melvin in the bubbly water. “I didn’t know Mr. Amick hadn’t been called
when I came,” I added.

  “And she didn’t say a word about you or the coroner when I called her,” Mrs. Dawkins protested.

  “You called Callie? What’s your relationship to Mr. Dawkins?” Harmon asked without pausing for a response to his first question.

  “He’s my husband. I’m Roselle Dawkins. We’ve only been back from our honeymoon a few weeks. Mel took me to Greece. The hot tub in our hotel suite was so much fun that Mel had this Jacuzzi put in for us at home. Tonight was our first time in it.” She burst into tears again. “We’re still newlyweds.”

  Levi stepped beside her and even if she didn’t want him there, she had no qualms about letting him hold her close against his chest while she cried. I wondered what their relationship was—ex-husband and wife?

  The men who attract me are usually tall. This Levi Pinckney wasn’t a lot taller than I am, and a few inches over five foot four isn’t even average for a man. His disheveled dark, curly hair fell forward over part of his forehead, and his deep brown eyes reflected concern for Mrs. Dawkins, but he still projected pheromoans in all directions. I know that’s not how to spell that word, but it’s what my friend Jane and I call that sensuality that just seems to emanate from some men.

  The man hadn’t even looked at me, but I sure wished I had on my bra. Buh-leeve me. I would have been happier if I’d had it on and had inflated it a little more than I usually did. I grew up with five brothers, so I know that most males react to healthy female chests.

  “Callie?” Sheriff Harmon called me. “Did you phone one of the part-timers to meet you here?”

  “No, sir,” I answered.

  “Jed’s going to need an autopsy on Melvin to determine cause of death. We’ll have to send him to Charleston.”

  “Are you going to call in forensics?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t see any signs of foul play,” Sheriff Harmon responded. “Jed thinks this appears to be natural, but we have to know cause of death. You’ll need one of Middleton’s part-time drivers to take Melvin to the medical university.”