Return to Death (Mortician Murder Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Return to Death

  A Mortician Murder Mystery–Book 1

  By

  A. E. Howe

  Desperate to escape the shadow of her family’s mortuary business, Kay Lamberton runs off to serve as a nurse in Vietnam. Fifteen years later, her father’s death draws her back to her Florida hometown in an attempt to pick up the pieces and convince her brother, Lee, to sell the funeral home before they both wind up on the streets.

  The last thing Kay expects to find upon her return is her high school sweetheart, laid out on a slab in the embalming room. While all signs point toward a simple drowning, it soon becomes clear to Kay and Lee that the funeral home’s newest client is the victim of murder.

  Faced with an incompetent local sheriff and a case of insatiable curiosity, Kay is consumed with the need to find out what happened to her old flame. Kay and Lee join forces with a reluctant deputy, a bumbling assistant and a dotty housekeeper to track down the murderer and uncover a decade’s worth of secrets.

  Books in the Mortician Murder Mystery Series:

  Return to Death (Book 1)

  Gambling on Death (Book 2)

  More coming soon!

  Join the mailing list to be notified of new releases by this author and to receive a free short story.

  Copyright © 2022 by A. E. Howe

  All rights reserved.

  www.aehowe.com

  Contents

  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

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Additional Books by the Author

  Chapter One

  Kay Lamberton slammed the stick into gear as she accelerated out of Gainesville. Why am I doing this? she asked herself before reaching down and turning up the volume on the cassette player. The Doors competed with the engine for audio dominance. Kay was grateful that she didn’t have to listen to the radio. All that had been on for the past week were reports about the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

  When she passed the sign informing her that she’d entered Melon County, even the music couldn’t drown out the anger and the questions running through her head. In only fifteen miles she’d have to deal with a lot of crap that she thought she’d left behind.

  The small town of Lang, Florida was warm and sleepy on this Tuesday afternoon in early April. The limbs of live oak trees stretched over the streets, hung with Spanish moss that dangled low enough for children to reach up and touch. Kay felt a stab of painful nostalgia as she entered the town. She’d been born in Gainesville at Alachua General Hospital, but the neighborhoods of Lang, where she’d been the mortician’s daughter, were home.

  The old grey Victorian that she’d grown up in was courted on all sides by live oaks and magnolias, which in turn were attended by a retinue of azaleas. Immediately, Kay noticed that the grass was unevenly cut and the south side of the house was badly in need of a pressure washing. She wasn’t surprised. Wasn’t that why she was there? Not to mow the yard and clean the house, but to fix it. Fix the mess that her father had left behind. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t his fault. He certainly hadn’t expected to die of pneumonia before he turned fifty-five.

  She parked around back beside the old hearse, which was cloaked in enough dust that she could have written her name on the rear windshield. It was amazing that some smart-ass kid hadn’t already scrawled Help! Let me out! on the glass.

  Sighing, she got out of the car, leaving her luggage behind. She’d have to make more than one trip anyway, and she wanted to get the dreaded confrontation with her little brother over with. Not calling ahead had been the right thing to do, but it meant that the conversation would probably start with him accusing her of crashing his little party.

  The back door was unlocked. Also not a surprise.

  “Hello!” she shouted, walking into the house. Lee could have been anywhere.

  “Coming!” Kay heard a man answer. She kept on walking through the embalming room. There were no bodies, she noted.

  “What are you doing back there?” A tall, thin man with long and lanky dark hair, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, stood in the doorway, frowning at Kay.

  “Who are you?” Kay asked, looking him up and down. He was dressed in a black jacket, tie and black pants. The jacket was unbuttoned and Kay could see a couple of stains on his white shirt.

  “I work here. Who are you?” he said, looking more perturbed.

  “I’m Lee’s sister and half-owner of this funeral home,” Kay said, and was pleased to see the startled look on the man’s face.

  “Oh.”

  “So?” Kay said, narrowing her eyes for emphasis.

  “I’m Lester Andrews. I work here.” He turned his head and yelled, “Lee! Your sister’s here!”

  “What?” came a reply from upstairs.

  Kay shook her head when Lester started to answer. “I’ll take care of this,” she told him as she brushed past him.

  She was mildly satisfied that the foyer, and what she could see of the casket room and the viewing room, weren’t in a complete state of disrepair. How much could the place have gone to wrack and ruin in three months? she asked herself, and then remembered that she was talking about the destructive force of her little brother.

  “Lee!” she thundered, facing up the six-foot-wide staircase.

  In seconds, her half-dressed brother stood at the top of the stairs, running his hand through his brown hair and looking down at her with a stunned expression on his face.

  “You didn’t call,” was all he managed to say.

  Kay looked at him, taking in his five-foot-ten frame that was carrying a few extra pounds, but was still in the type of shape that a twenty-six-year-old could maintain without much effort. He was wearing black dress pants, a white T-shirt, socks and no shoes.

  “Crazy me, I thought I could just drop in, seeing as I own half the business.”

  “Yeah, right, of course.” Lee started down the stairs, half tripping in his socks. “I’m just surprised.”

  “Who is he?” Kay pointed to Lester, who had followed her into the hallway.

  “That’s Lester.”

  “He told me his name. I mean what is he doing here?”

  “He’s… he’s helping out. You know, wants to be a funeral director,” Lee said as he reached the bottom step.

  “You can’t afford any full-time employees. You’ve got Jerome if you need a hand with a funeral.”

  “Well, things come up. Jerome has his regular job.” Lee stopped talking when he saw the look on Kay’s face, then added brightly, “We had a funeral today.”

  “How many have you had this week?”

  “It’s been kind of slow.”

  “How many?”

  “The one today. But we had the viewing yesterday.”

  “How many last month?”


  “Like I said, it’s been…”

  “How many?”

  “Total?”

  “Yes.” Kay felt her blood rising. She’d tried to prepare herself for this, but there was a big difference between suspecting it and seeing lifetimes of work by her grandfather and father going down the drain.

  “Three burials.”

  Kay winced. It was worse than she thought. “Dad said that you need to bury two people a week to stay afloat. Three to make a decent profit. You’re not even managing one a week.”

  “That’s not fair. There were slow times when Dad… was alive.”

  Kay saw his jaw clench. She knew that their father’s death had been harder for Lee than for her. Harder for him for the very same reason he couldn’t be trusted to run the funeral home. Lee had always been the baby of the family.

  “I’m going to be here for one week so we can get this all cleared up.” Kay turned and headed back out to the car to bring in her stuff.

  “What do you mean ‘cleared up?’ What do we need to clear up?” There was an edge of desperation in Lee’s voice as he followed her out of the house.

  “I told you on the phone last month. You can’t run the funeral home.”

  “No, wait, we haven’t talked this over.” The desperation was now mixed with anger.

  “How many clients have you lost?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kay stopped, slapped her hand against one of the carport columns, then looked him square in the eyes. “How many deaths around here do you know of that have gone to other funeral homes?”

  “A few.”

  “No. The number.”

  “Since when?” Lee muttered, looking anywhere but into her eyes. She knew he was stalling.

  “Since three months ago when Dad died.”

  After a long pause, Lee said very quietly, “Fifteen.”

  “See.”

  “But we’ve taken care of ten people who passed away,” he pleaded.

  “You can’t lose more than half your business. You’re operating at a loss. Dad barely kept this place afloat as it was.”

  “I may not be the best salesman,” Lee admitted.

  “It’s not even about that. Those fifteen families would have come here when Dad was alive. He didn’t have to sell himself. You’re twenty-six. Too young. People just don’t feel comfortable with a funeral director who’s young. Even Dad worked for several years under his own father.”

  “We had ten funerals,” Lee repeated defiantly.

  “In three months.” She turned away.

  “I’m good at this. I don’t want to work for someone else,” he said as Kay opened the hatchback of her car.

  “Lee, you’re an artist when it comes to embalming someone. But that’s not good enough to keep this place running.”

  “Hi, dear!” came a loud, clear voice from the window of the apartment over the carport. Kay didn’t need to look up to know that it was Ruby Bowen. Her father had hired the eccentric older woman as a housekeeper over a year ago, the latest in a long line of similar hires since their mother had died.

  “Are you going to tell Ruby that we’re closing?” Lee said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Eventually.” That was one job she wasn’t looking forward to.

  “Let’s talk this out. We can come up with a solution,” Lee begged.

  “We can talk, but it’s not going to make any difference. When we were in the lawyer’s office after Dad’s funeral, I knew this was where we’d end up.” She took pity on her younger brother. “Dad never expected to die when he was only fifty-four. If he’d lived to be sixty-five or seventy, then you’d have been ready to take over the business. In that case, I’d have sold you my half and everything would be great. But not like this. You couldn’t buy my half if you wanted to. Even if you had the money, I wouldn’t sell it to you knowing that in a year or two you’d be broke and the place would be sold to whichever funeral home in Gainesville could come up with the money to pay its debts and take it over.”

  “So you’ll just sell it to them now?” Lee asked as they heard the slow and steady steps of Ruby coming down the stairs from her apartment.

  “We don’t have any choice.” Kay lifted her suitcase and duffel bag from the car.

  “We? Do I have any say in this?”

  “If there aren’t any choices, then what good is it to have a say?”

  “What’s all this shouting about?” Ruby asked as she joined them and reached for Kay’s bags. “Let me help you with those.”

  “I’ve got them. Thanks.” Kay wondered what would have happened if she’d handed over either one of the bags. Both of them weighed at least forty pounds. At only five feet tall and one hundred and thirty pounds, Ruby was squat and sturdy, but how much could she carry at her age?

  “Then you have to let me fix you a snack.” Ruby was already heading for the kitchen door.

  Kay knew there was no way she’d get out of this without eating something. “Just a snack. I had a big lunch.”

  “We’ve got some wonderful strawberries. The last of the season.”

  “You’re going to tell her she’s losing her job… and her home,” Lee told Kay.

  “Later.” Kay was already exhausted. Closing the funeral home was going to be worse than she’d imagined. I was delusional to think that Lee might be reasonable.

  “It’s not just Ruby. You have to fire Jerome too.”

  “Jerome is only part-time. He’s got his full-time job as a deputy. You can fire Lester.”

  “I don’t want to fire anyone,” Lee said defensively. “We just need some time…” They were still talking in gruff whispers to keep from being overheard.

  “Enough,” Kay said when they reached the stairs. “Carry this.”

  Kay tossed the duffel bag at Lee and he almost fell over backward catching it. For a moment he looked like he was going to toss it back or just let it drop, but instead he started up the stairs.

  “I’m not going to give up without a fight,” he grumbled just loud enough for Kay to hear him.

  “Fight all you want.” She followed him up the stairs, carrying the suitcase.

  Ten minutes later, everyone gathered in the small kitchen as Ruby fried up cheese sandwiches. Kay and Lee exchanged looks over the table, but they both kept silent about her plans to sell the home. Neither wanted to be the one to give Ruby and Lester the bad news.

  After Kay escaped upstairs to her room, she grabbed a change of clothes from the duffel bag, then headed to the bathroom for a shower. Stripped down to her bra and underwear, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the inside of the door and frowned. Her shoulder-length brown hair was boring. A few times when she was younger, she’d tried covering it with peroxide and ended up with a straw-colored mess. It was worth a laugh, but not a long-term solution.

  She looked at her shoulders, flexing right and left. Too broad for a woman’s figure, she thought, frowning some more. Then she remembered how well that upper-body strength had served her when she’d enlisted in the Army as a nurse.

  She’d arrived in Vietnam one month before the Battle of Hamburger Hill. In two months, she’d gone from a child to a woman who could drag wounded soldiers from tent to tent, or pack up a temporary aid station for deployment or evac in an hour. She’d had a hard time at first, with the soldiers thinking she was more a sister or a girlfriend than a nurse. Then, one night while she was getting some much-needed sleep, a mortar round had gone off outside her tent. The piece of shrapnel wasn’t very large, but it had left a small scar on the soft curve where her neck met her shoulder.

  In the mirror, she watched her fingers lightly stroke the scar tissue. She hadn’t told her patients, but word had eventually gotten around that she had a Purple Heart and the scar to go with it. She’d done a number of brave and stupid things before that moment to help save lives, but somehow the fact that she’d been touched by the searing hot metal of a Vietnamese mortar shell had made her one of them in the eyes
of the other soldiers. That acceptance made her proud. Proud of the scar, and proud of the soldiers and civilians she’d helped during her two tours of duty.

  Kay took one last look in the mirror. Her body might not have been the type to grab the eye of every man on the street, but that had never bothered her. She just wished it was a little more attractive to some of the men that she did want to notice her. She climbed into the clawfoot tub, then drew the curtain and let the almost-too-hot water wash away the miles and the years since she’d last spent much time in this house.

  Back in her room she walked around, looking at the trinkets from her childhood. Since she’d left the funeral home for good fifteen years earlier, her room had been used only for the occasional overnight guest. Her father, widowed when Kay was only fourteen, had never brought himself to change anything.

  Am I right to force Lee to sell the funeral home? Our home? she asked herself.

  Lee couldn’t run it alone. That much was clear, and she’d known it from the day that their father had died. Lee wasn’t mature enough to handle running the business, and there wasn’t enough money to hire someone to help him. There was no other choice but to sell.

  Kay ran her hand over the pine bookcase where her mother had painted vines running up and around each shelf. Her fingers lingered next to the five Parker Family mystery books that her parents had given her for Christmas when she was twelve years old. The stories revolved around a brother and sister, Joey and Ellie Parker, who solved mysteries in their small town. At the time, Kay had been sure that the books were a none-too-subtle attempt by her parents to encourage her to play nice with her brother, and Kay had pretended not to care much for the books. In truth, though, she’d loved them and had checked out the other ten books in the series from the library. The parents in the books, a high school science teacher father and a nurse mother, played a role in each mystery, and Kay had to admit that the mother’s profession had influenced her choice of a career.

  After flipping through the books, she turned to the other items on the bookcase. She picked up a ceramic horse, one of a dozen that were lined up on a shelf. It was black with three white legs, and its mane and tail were made of black hair. Her mother had gotten it for her on a trip to Kentucky. Where was she going to put all of these memories? She couldn’t throw them away. Pack them up? Put them in storage until she discovered what the rest of her life was going to bring?