Cadaver Lab, page 5
Through the open door to the meeting room, a bout of laughter rose above the loud din of conversation already coming from the book club members. It reinforced the fact they already had a full house tonight.
“That’s the beauty of it. They don’t want to be inside. They need to be outside,” Jules explained.
“Outside. Okay. Like in the yard?”
She hoped they were looking to truly embrace nature since she hadn’t dealt with the overgrown grass that desperately needed to be mowed. She also hoped they didn’t sue her if they all came down with Lyme Disease from any ticks residing on her property.
“Actually, I suggested they meet on the roof.”
“The roof?” She hadn’t even been up there yet. “Is that safe? Will it hold them all?” she asked in a whisper.
“Yes and yes. I went up there and walked around. It’s solid and flat with a lip around the edge. The stairs have a railing. It seems safe enough.”
“But why the roof and not the side yard?” she asked. Besides the fact there wasn’t anywhere to sit. Getting exterior tables and chairs or at least a couple of garden benches was already on her ever-growing list.
“Because they’re going sky clad.”
Natalie’s eyes widened at Jules’s words. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
If memory served she’d seen that term before in a book she’d read and she was pretty sure it was what Wiccans, or maybe it was Druids, called dancing naked in the moonlight.
Jules laughed. “If you think it means butt-ass naked, then yes.”
Natalie pivoted back to take in the group of ladies. Old. Young. Fat. Skinny. It was quite a mix of females. She pictured them all naked, dancing around her side yard. Then she pictured the old ladies—and old men—in town seeing them dancing naked in her yard.
“Okay. Good call. You’re sure they’re okay with being on the roof?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re excited. They know the way upstairs. If you’re busy, just send them up. I showed the group leader when she came in while you were in the hospital. Ooo, one more thing. One of the ladies makes tarot cards and asked if we could sell them in the store on consignment. Fifty-fifty split. Twenty dollars retail. They’re gorgeous so I said yes. I tagged and put ten packs out in the spirituality section.”
It seemed a lot happened while she’d been in the hospital. More than had happened in the month since she’d opened. And she hadn’t even been a patient for a full twenty-four hours.
Biting her lip to keep from expressing the dozen or so concerns and questions she had, she let out a breath. “Okay. Thank you. Sorry to bother you at home.”
“No problem. Text me if you have more questions!” Jules offered.
Text. Not call. Message received.
“Thanks.” Natalie disconnected, put the cell down and turned to the tall woman with butt-length salt-and-pepper waves who was standing slightly in front of the others filling her shop. Ignoring the potential insurance ramifications, not to mention possible fire code violations, she said, “All right. If you don’t need anything from me, you can go on up to the roof.”
With a nod and a, “Blessed be,” the group—or was it coven—ascended the stairs with an ethereal swish of long skirts and capes that looked enough like a scene out of Salem that Natalie had to shake off a chill.
Another bout of laughter drew her attention back to her other guests. The Raunchy Romance Readers Book Club.
She moved to the open door and peeked inside. It seemed the iced tea and cookies had been a hit. She saw a cup in every hand and that the cookie platter was much emptier than it had been when they’d carried it inside. She could use a bit of a pick-me-up herself since she was going on ten hours in the shop.
Sneaking in to not disturb them, she grabbed a cup and poured a good amount of tea.
It was cold and thirst quenching, sweetened with just enough honey. It went down too smoothly and since there was still plenty left for the club members, Natalie poured herself a second cup, guiltily grabbed a cookie from the platter then crept back through the door to the shop.
Twenty-minutes later, the book club showed no signs up breaking up soon. Natalie had restocked the wine shelves, unpacked the latest book delivery, and replied to a question on the shop’s Facebook page.
She was tired but somehow energized at the same time. As if her mind was sharp while her body settled into a state of warm, fuzzy relaxation. Like how she felt after a massage—back in the days when she could treat herself to such luxuries.
Maybe her coffee addiction was what kept her on edge and feeling like she was spinning out of control all day. She needed to indulge in tea more often. It seemed even better than wine to raise her spirits and calm the anxiety but without dulling her mental abilities.
Liking the idea of becoming a tea drinker, she settled into the one cushy chair she had room for in the corner of the bookshop, whipped out her cell phone and started to shop for fun tea on Amazon. That led her to pretty teacups. Then intricately designed teaspoons. And a beehive shaped glass honey server…
She felt energized and inspired, even after the triple R ladies finally left and after the roof group came down—fully dressed again, thank goodness—an hour later.
Alone but not at all sleepy, Natalie decided now was the perfect time to make one of her book dreams come true.
Rainbow bookshelves.
What better time to rearrange the shelves than while there were no customers. No ringing phone. No deliveries pulling her away.
By morning when the store opened she’d have the front bookcase arranged by color, like a rainbow of books on the shelves. Just like she’d seen on TikTok, which she was now addicted to thanks to Jules showing her how to search #booktok on the app.
Inspired, she’d already unloaded all the books onto the floor and was just starting to make a plan for reshelving them by color when a hard loud knock on the door made her jump.
After a yelp of surprise, she spun toward the door and scowled when she saw who it was.
Struggling to her feet from her spot on the floor, she stumbled to the door, flipped the lock and yanked it open.
“What are you doing here? Was my book club too loud for you?” she asked with as much attitude as she could muster in her Zen state.
“No. But I’d appreciate if they didn’t trespass.”
“What are you talking about?”
He folded his arms and didn’t shrink at all in the face of her bad attitude. “I found two of your book club ladies peeping through my windows while the third one sat in the car like a getaway driver.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Feeling feisty, she said, “Maybe I don’t. Can your employees corroborate your story?”
“What employees?”
“I saw an older guy going in and out all day today.”
As he frowned, she elaborated. “Grey hair. Walked with a limp.”
“There was no one there but me today.”
“Well then you’ve got a peeping tom but it wasn’t my book club ladies.”
“Fine. Believe what you want but the security cameras are getting installed tomorrow. Might want to tell your ladies that.”
“I will not, thank you.”
He rolled his eyes, then frowned at the row of red books she’d managed to reshelve before his interruption, his gaze moving down to the piles of books stacked on the floor she had yet to organize. “What are you doing?”
“Organizing the books by color. Like a rainbow.”
He shook his head and after a distinctly judgmental glance, turned and with a tinkling of the bell and a rudely loud slam of the door, he was gone.
Eyes narrowed in anger—part for his interrupting her and part over the accusation—she watched him stride away as she locked the door.
And as the same old man she’d mentioned and he’d denied knowing followed him back to the warehouse she let out a loud snort.
“Rude and a liar.”
She turned back to her project. At least men in books made her happy. Book boyfriends were the only men worth giving her time to.
nine
Opening time seemed to come earlier than usual since Natalie didn’t get to bed, and then not to sleep, until the wee hours of the morning.
She was tired but she still felt good. Unshowered and with only half a cup of coffee in her system, she still unlocked the door with a smile and a greeting for the old lady walking past.
All that earned her was a frown and a stare from the woman, who bustled off a little faster, all while glancing over her shoulder suspiciously at Natalie.
Even that couldn’t bring her mood down today. Especially when she looked at her beautiful new book display. She was just admiring it when the door flung open and Jules barreled in.
Natalie frowned. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“It’s finals week. This is more important anyway.”
“More important than finals?”
“I had one this morning. I don’t have another one until later today. But listen—Nice rainbow shelves by the way.” Jules eyeballed the new display that had kept Natalie up way past her bedtime before turning back.
“Thanks, and I’m listening.”
The door opened again and Harper blew in like a hurricane. “WBNG wants to interview you!”
Jules scowled. “Way to steal my thunder.”
“Sorry, Jules. I just saw the message and couldn’t wait.”
“What message? And how do you both know about this and not me?”
“They private messaged the shop’s Instagram,” Julia began.
“We both have the log in so we can post,” Harper added.
And Natalie didn’t remember to check for messages on Instagram on a good day. Never mind on a day after she’d barely slept. In the interest of saving her sanity she’d turned off all notifications on her phone. She definitely hadn’t checked this morning after rolling out of bed barely half an hour before opening.
“What do they want to interview me about?” She was starting to get excited. If they did a feature about the shop it could bring in a ton of new business—
“About your getting electrocuted,” Harper revealed.
Natalie’s shoulders fell along with her excitement. She shook her head. “I don’t know—”
“You have to do it. Think of the publicity,” Jules cried.
“I agree with Jules.” Harper nodded. “This could be big for the shop.”
Natalie drew in a breath and let it out. “Fine. When?”
Later that afternoon, after making a fool of herself on WBNG and with the spirit of a dead guy relentlessly following her around the shop, she truly regretted that earlier decision to do the interview.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jules asked.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Jules narrowed her eyes at her. “Are you sure? You told me you could see dead people.”
“I know. I think it’s just my vision is off. Between the lights and the sun glare and the electrocution and all, my eyes are a little messed up. I couldn’t see clearly. People looked, you know, ghostly,” she lied, pretty smoothly she thought. “Thanks for not telling Harper what I told you, by the way. It’s so embarrassing.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Mere seconds after spewing she could see dead people to Jules, Natalie had decided she couldn’t tell anyone about this.
If it were true, they’d think she was crazy. If it weren’t true, they’d force her to go to the hospital again. She couldn’t afford that bill or to have the shop closed. She felt fine physically. Really the only symptom was Gabe the talking ghost and his creepy friends who didn’t respect her personal space.
At least only Gabe was inside the shop with her now. Well, Gabe and Jules who was still looking at her like she’d lost it.
“I’m fine. I promise. I’ll call you—I mean text you if I start to feel funny.”
“Or Harper if I don’t answer. I’ll be in my final for a couple of hours. But Harper said she was going back to the house to do some work.”
And thank God she hadn’t told Harper about the dead people after the interview. She wouldn’t be as easy to lie to as Jules. More than that, she’d probably want to use the idea in a book and need to interview her for ghost details or something.
Turning Jules toward the door, she said, “I promise to call Harper too. Now go. Do great on your final. Get an A. Graduate and come work more hours for me before you leave me to start college this fall.”
With her hand on the knob, Jules finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll check on you as soon as I’m done with the test.”
“Good. I’ll await your text. Good luck.”
When the door finally closed behind the girl Natalie crumbled back against the front display table. And there was Gabe, right in front of her. Much too close, as usual.
Dead people really had no sense of personal space.
“Will you give me some room, please?” she hissed out of the side of her mouth so no one in the shop would hear her talking to what appeared to be no one.
Hell, she might be speaking to no one for all she knew. She still wasn’t convinced Gabe wasn’t caused by some brain bleed.
“Why aren’t you looking for who killed me?” he demanded.
He followed her as she made her way to the register counter. “Because I have a shop to run and bills to pay. I’ll work on your case later. After I close.”
“There’s treasure,” he said in a sing-song tone.
She let out a snort of a laugh loud enough to draw the attention of the woman perusing the Women’s Fiction section.
“Sorry.” Natalie cringed and pointed to the cell phone in her hand as an excuse for her outburst. “Funny cat video.”
As the woman raised her brows then returned to some book with a pastel beach cover that pretty much looked like all the books on the shelf next to it, Gabe put his ghostly finger right in Natalie’s face.
“What’s wrong with you? That treasure would pay off all your bills. Plus set you up for the rest of your life. What are you? Like forty years old? Forty-five?”
“What? No. I’m not even forty yet, thank you,” she whispered with a scowl. She was holding on to the final months of being thirty-nine with both hands and no ghost was going to take that from her.
Forty-five. Humph.
Since Gabe insisted on having this conversation in front of customers, while insulting her, she pushed an earbud into her ear so it would look like she was speaking on the phone.
“Wouldn’t you like to be retired at under forty?” he asked. “And, upside, you get one hundred percent of the treasure since your partner—me—is dead.”
“You saying the word treasure over and over again is not making me have any more faith in you, you know. In fact, it’s making me believe your story even less.”
His blue eyes widened. “My story? What do you mean? I was murdered. Did you not see the knife in my back?” He twisted for her to see the disturbing evidence yet again.
“I saw. But how do I know how that happened? You said yourself you don’t even know who stabbed you,” she whispered. Even if the customer did believe she was speaking on the cell phone, talking about stabbings probably wouldn’t be viewed as an appropriate topic of conversation.
“I couldn’t see them because—obviously—they were behind me. Duh.” He spread his hands wide. “Besides, I asked around. Apparently we don’t remember the exact moment of our death.”
“Asked around as in you asked the other ghosts?” she hissed after a glance around her.
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“So how do you know it wasn’t just a normal everyday mugging gone wrong?” she asked.
“Because I was only steps away from discovering the treasure.”
“Pirate treasure?” she asked with amusement. “Was it buried? Is there a map with a big X marking the spot? Or no. Wait. Nazi treasure. Is it the holy grail? Is that why you’re dressed like Indiana Jones? And about that…are you stuck in the clothes you died in forever? Can you take them off?”
He ignored her questions and narrowed his eyes at her with a glare. “It’s the largest, most valuable cache of Prohibition-era wealth in history. Hidden by a gangster before he was killed. And I wasn’t the only one looking for it. Hence the knife in the back.”
She let out a sigh and after another glance at the woman shopping said, “Did it happen here in town? Is that why you’re stuck haunting here?” she whispered.
“No. I’m not stuck in the place where I died. I’m tethered to my body.”
She nodded. “So your body is here in Mudville?”
“Is that where we are?” He glanced out the door. “Where the hell is Mudville? What state?”
“Upstate New York. Near Binghamton.”
He nodded.
“So you were buried here…”
“Oh, I’m not buried.” He let out a snort.
“What do you mean?” she frowned. Was he cremated? And if so were his ashes in a jar on someone’s mantle? Someone she was going to have to go tell their loved one had been murdered. Yeah, that was going to go over well.
“My body’s over there.” He pointed to the warehouse.
Natalie’s eyes popped wide as pieces of the puzzle flew together in her mind.
Mary Brimley claiming she saw a body being carried in by two men out of the back of a pick-up truck. Hot doctor storming over here upset about a peeping tom. The rumors he was a serial killer or an assassin. And now a ghost claiming he was murdered and his body was inside.
Oh. My. God.
ten
“You okay? You look kinda pale.” Ghost Gabe leaned closer to peer into Natalie’s face.
She barely got enough breath into her lungs to say, “Your body… is in the warehouse?”
He nodded. “Yup. Cut up in pieces.”
The room swayed and so did Natalie. She grabbed for the edge of the counter, bracing herself as she repeated, “Pieces?”
She pressed one hand to the base of her throat as she felt the vomit threatening to rise. She’d asked the murderer out for drinks. She could have been his next victim. Trapped in the warehouse for eternity with Gabe. In pieces!
