Casket Case

Chapter 12

Nora drives back to the store without making the decision to do so. She doesn’t remember unlocking the door. Flipping the sign from Closed to Open. Starting work again as if the things that made sense this morning still make sense this afternoon.

Garrett is a murderer.

It’s basic logic. It’s Occam’s razor. Sherlock Holmes would agree.

Three people in Nora’s life have died since she met him: Frank, Ethan, and Mrs. Dooley.

Garrett was there all three times: with Frank at the restaurant, at the scene of Ethan’s accident, and in Mrs. Dooley’s room.

Of all the casket companies in all the world, of course a murderer would walk into hers.

He’s had numerous opportunities to murder her, too. He always knows where she is. She sleeps next to him. He could easily poison her food or slip something into her glass of wine. He killed Mrs. Dooley in broad daylight, so he doesn’t seem scared of being caught.

Did Garrett kill Mrs. Dooley? Nora didn’t actually see him do it. She’s ninety-five percent sure. The timing could have been a coincidence. Or maybe he didn’t kill her directly. Maybe he got her worked up. He confronted her. He revealed a secret. What if he’s her long-lost grandson?

General Hospital is getting to Nora’s brain, but people in Port Charles get murdered in hospital beds all the time, so maybe it’s a good place to start.

The bell over the front door rings as the door swings open, and the time it takes for the person to enter tells her who to expect.

“Hello, Mr. Roy,” Nora calls, as the old man plops the front two wheels of his silver walker over the threshold. She would try to help him, but she knows from experience that he’ll put up a fight.

Mr. Roy has been old and crotchety for as long as Nora has been alive. He certainly wouldn’t let a woman hold the door for him. Mr. Roy believes that women should be confined to the kitchen, even though his wife, Eustice, God rest her patient soul, was in every room of the house while he pretended to be confined to his recliner. She brought him his meals on a tray. She told him when to go to bed. She laid out his clothes for him. After she died, he needed to find a new way to exert his power, which is why he comes to the Square to bother local business owners from time to time.

“Hey there, girl.” He’s wearing the same denim overalls and red flannel shirt he wears every time he leaves his house. What’s left of his white hair is sticking out all over his head. He squints to see Nora across the room through his thick, metal-framed glasses.

“What can I do for you?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he uses his walker to make his way to the counter.

He clicks his walker forward, and his feet slide along after it.

Click of the walker. Left foot. Right foot.

Click of the walker. Left foot. Right foot.

Nora’s boyfriend might be murdering the people of their town, but sure, she has time to wait for the oldest person in Rabbittown to demonstrate his masculinity.

When Mr. Roy finally makes it to the counter, she repeats the question she feels like she asked two days ago: “What can I do for you?”

He takes a second to catch his breath. “I want to see my papers.”

“Do you want to change something?”

“I want to see my papers.”

Nora didn’t bother to refile the hard copies after the last time he came in with the same demand, but she makes a show of opening a drawer in the filing cabinet and searching through folders until she locates his in the front of the drawer. She slides the folder across the counter, and he stretches his neck out to see it.

He sorted all of this out with Nora’s parents, but he still comes in and drags his middle finger across every word of every page, particularly the part that specifies where he wants to be buried. Even if the hard copy disintegrates, the copy stored in the cloud disappears, and the same thing happens at the funeral home and at his lawyer’s office, Nora thinks, someone in town will have sense enough to bury him next to his wife under the tombstone labeled James Roy . None of it matters anyway, because this man is over one hundred years old, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Nora’s fingers drum on the countertop, and the toe of her right shoe taps out a similar beat on the floor. “They should be the same as the last time you came in, Mr. Roy. I haven’t changed anything.”

He will believe this once he reads it on the paper copy. Nora needs to find out who at the church is responsible for giving him rides to the Square, so she can tell them to stop. After he leaves here, Mr. Roy is going to click and slide on down to talk to the pharmacy staff about his prescriptions and then to the grocery store to ask questions about the same grocery order he gets every week.

Mr. Roy licks the tip of his thumb and rubs it against the tip of his index finger, so he can flip to the second page of the twenty-year-old file. Nora would prefer this man to be in his recliner rubbing spit on his own belongings. She needs to find Garrett. Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she needs to find the police station. Maybe she needs to leave town and hope he never finds her.

Mr. Roy makes a clucking noise under his breath as he gets to the part about the burial plot. She’s told him before that Rabbittown Casket Company doesn’t do the burying.

“You can check all that with the Chandlers,” she says. “I can have Johnny call you at home.”

He ignores her presence, running his crooked middle finger across the words on the page in front of him.

“Do you have a question?”

Still nothing.

“I think you handled all of this with my dad. He was the one who processed it. The notes in the back are in his handwriting.” She hopes that the thought of a male church deacon filling out his forms will assure him.

Before Nora realizes it, she is openly pacing behind the desk. Maybe if she told him it was a matter of life and death, he would click on to his next victim. Actually, since he’s made it to one hundred, maybe he has some advice on the situation. If he mentions what she tells him to anyone, no one will believe him.

“Can I ask you something, Mr. Roy?”

He looks up at her for the first time, his light eyes staring through his silver-rimmed glasses. He makes a noise that sounds like “Huh?”

“If I think, but I’m not sure, that my boyfriend might be involved in something he shouldn’t be, you know, like breaking a commandment, do you think I should ask him about it?”

Mr. Roy’s eyes squint ever so slightly.

“It might be nothing.”

He looks down at the file and then back up at her.

“Mr. Roy?”

The bell over the door rings again, and in walks Garrett, looking much the same as he had earlier. Was that just today? He smiles at Nora without reserve, so she knows he doesn’t know she knows. She smiles back out of habit, or because it’s hard not to smile at the person you love.

“Hi. Mr. Roy and I were just finishing up.”

“Take your time,” Garrett says.

He smirks at the frustrated look she gives him in return.

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Roy?” Nora asks again.

Mr. Roy turns his head far enough so that he can see Garrett looking at one of the display caskets. He looks back as if waiting for an explanation.

“That’s my boyfriend.” She is fully prepared to paint him as senile if he refers to anything he shouldn’t.

Mr. Roy claps his hand down on top of the file. “This is fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m going to put it back in the cabinet for safekeeping.”

“I want to make sure me and Mrs. Roy wind up in the same place.”

“You will,” she says, holding up the file. “It’s all here.”

“See, girl, the only thing to do when you’re not sure is to get sure.” He widens his eyes enough that Nora knows he’s not just talking about Eustice.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

He gives a single nod, signaling that the matter is settled, and then he clicks his walker around in a circle until he’s facing the door.

Click of the walker. Left foot. Right foot.

Click of the walker. Left foot. Right foot.

Mr. Roy pauses halfway there to take a deep breath, and Garrett takes a step toward him. She waves her hand to get Garrett’s attention and shakes her head to discourage any assistance. Sure enough, Mr. Roy is clicking again in no time. When he’s a click or two away from the door, Garrett approaches.

“Let me get that,” Garrett says, swinging the door open wide enough for the walker to fit through.

“I can manage, boy.”

Once he’s gone, Garrett steps back in and asks, “Is he okay by himself like that?”

“He’s off to torment someone else. He’s fine.”

“That was sweet. What he said about his wife. Did he call me ‘boy’?”

“He’s like one hundred and two, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Will you flip the sign?”

He turns the sign to Closed and walks across the store toward her. She still has no plan. She doesn’t want to upset him in case he does skew homicidal, so she attempts to go through the usual motions of their greeting. Instead, when he drops his head to kiss her, she hears Mrs. Dooley telling her to run. Nora pulls away as soon as their lips meet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing. What are you doing here?”

“I thought we could go to dinner once you’re done.”

She takes a step back to organize her thoughts. Should they go to dinner, so she can question him in public?

“You look a million miles away,” Garrett says. “What’s going on?”

Nora is a terrible actress. No point in trying to put it off.

“I saw you today. At the nursing home.”

He hesitates for the briefest of moments, but it’s enough.

“I know.” He smiles. “We spoke, remember?”

“After that, with Mrs. Dooley. I saw you.”

All of the emotion leaves his face, and she takes another step away from him. She doesn’t have weapons stashed anywhere, but if she can catch him off guard she might be able to make it to the door. She just needs to get out onto the street to scream for help.

“Nora, whatever you saw, it’s not what you think.”

He holds his hand out toward her as if she’s a stray animal. Like he doesn’t want her to do anything rash. It’s one thing to know that someone has lied to you, to know you can’t trust that person. To feel the hurt and the betrayal. Nora can handle those things fine. She’s done it before. She can’t handle the not knowing, the confusion, the gray area. She’s opened the door, and now she has to walk through it.

“Why don’t you explain it to me, then?” She crosses her arms over her chest, the classic body language of an angry girlfriend, but what she feels is beyond anger.

He runs his hand over his face without saying anything.

“If you can’t explain what happened with Mrs. Dooley, maybe you can tell me what you did the day we met when you went to see Frank. Or how about the night Ethan died? It was a Tuesday. Do you remember?”

“I was working that night,” he says, his face void of any emotion, as if he’s reading his lines from a script.

“That Wednesday, you came to my house after your work trip, and I told you all about Ethan dying, and you stayed at my house for the first time. Do you remember that?”

“Of course I—”

“When you got to my house that night, I could tell you were upset about something, and you acted like you were just tired from work. I want to know what that was about.”

He stands there for a moment, trying to figure out what to say.

“You can’t just answer the question about where you were? I’ll tell you exactly where I was at any point in time you want to know.”

“Why don’t you believe I was working?”

“?‘Working’ is not a real answer. What does ‘working’ mean? What were you doing?”

“I told you already. I had to train a new person in the middle of nowhere. Then I had to stop in with some clients in Huntsville, and then I came to your house. That’s it.”

“You do see that’s not telling me anything, right?”

“I’m trying.” His defeated tone breaks Nora’s heart a little.

“What do you do for work?” she asks. “Literally, what do you do?”

“I told you, logistics.”

“So, what do you do when you meet with a client?”

“We move things from one place to another. That’s all.”

“Honestly, are you five years old? What sort of ‘things’ do you move, Garrett? Name one ‘thing.’?”

He rubs his hand against his temple. “Depends on the client.”

“This,” Nora says, gesturing to his face. “ This is what I mean. You’re lying to me. I can tell by your face you’re hiding something.”

“I’m not lying. It’s just not simple to explain.”

“So, I’m too stupid to understand your job?”

“No! I never said that.” His eyes beg her to believe him.

“Then explain it to me. What happened with Mrs. Dooley today?”

“Do you not trust me?”

“Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining. Something is going on here. I knew it was too good to be true. I never should have let it get this far.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I think you should go.”

“Can we please just talk about this?”

“I gave you a chance to talk, and you didn’t take it. This is over.”

“Don’t say that,” he says, taking a step toward her.

“Don’t take another step,” she says, holding up her hand, as if she could possibly stop him if he really wanted to close the gap, if he really wanted to convince her not to do this. “I just want this to be over. I won’t tell anyone anything. Please just leave.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes.” Tears pool in her eyes, and a lump rises in her throat.

“I won’t hurt you, Nora. You can’t think I would do that.”

“How could I think anything else?”

“Please just give me five minutes.”

Nora makes the mistake of looking at him when he says this. She doesn’t want to be involved in any murdery, vigilante bullshit, but she doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep again without knowing. Without fully understanding what sort of person he is.

“Five minutes,” she says. “If you hesitate one time, I’m finished. The clock is starting.”

“Can we sit down?”

She points to one of the chairs in front of her desk and sits across from him in her desk chair. Whatever is coming is not going to be good, and she doesn’t want her mind to be clouded by his proximity or by the memories of his skin on hers. He sits down in the chair and wrings his hands for a moment. She can’t wait any longer for him to put words together.

“Are you some kind of drug dealer?” she asks.

He seems surprised by the question. “No, I’m not a drug dealer.”

“Are you an assassin?”

His mouth drops open. “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

“I was with Mrs. Dooley right before you were, and she was fine. Then you went in, and she died. Circumstantial, maybe, but it’s not nothing. You need to start talking.”

“It’s hard to figure out where to start.” He takes a deep breath. “First of all, Nora, I meant what I said. I love you. I want a future with you. I never meant to hurt you by keeping this from you, but I hope you’ll understand why I did.

“When I was a junior in college, I met a recruiter, and she offered me an internship. I think she must have known about my experience with my brother. I don’t know. She said we would be helping real people in a tangible way, and I had been sort of floundering and didn’t know what I wanted to do, but when she said that, it just clicked. I couldn’t think of anything that sounded better, so I took the offer and moved to Kentucky for the summer. I moved back there after graduation. I’ve been with the company ever since. It was a lot of travel at first. After a few years, I got transferred to Minnesota. Then a small town in Texas. Then my boss got promoted to a position in Pittsburgh, and she promoted me out of the field to an analyst job there. A couple of months ago, she offered me regional director of logistics for this region, so I moved here.”

“You’re still not telling me anything tangible.”

“I’m trying.” He takes a break from wringing his hands to rub his temples. Then he places his hands in his lap and squares his shoulders, his green eyes boring into hers. “I really do work in logistics, but the things that I move from one place to another are human beings. I help human beings get from the living world to the other side.”

He clears his throat. “I work for Death.”

Nora assumes this is some sort of metaphor, so she waits for him to continue. He doesn’t. He’s waiting for her to respond. She takes a deep breath as she processes what she just heard. Then she laughs. She can’t help it. After a few seconds, she’s doubled over laughing in front of a sociopath or psychopath or whatever sort of path would do this.

“I’m not kidding, Nora.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she says through tears. “It’s not even surprising that this would happen to me, you know?”

“I swear I’m telling you the truth.”

“You can leave now. I don’t know if you’re having some sort of psychotic break, but I need you to do it somewhere else.”

“I swear it’s true, and I’ll answer whatever you want to know.”

“I want to know why you’re still here.”

He runs his hand through his hair. “I’m ready to answer questions. Ask me.”

“Fine. Are you trying to make killing people into some sort of reputable job?”

“I don’t kill anyone. I’m just the person who explains that they’re dying when they’re dying. It’s easier if someone is around to guide you through the process.”

“And you claim there are more of you?”

“Yes, I work for a global corporation.”

“Death? Death is a corporation?”

“I know it sounds crazy—”

“I was with my grandmother when she died, so why didn’t I see you? Why doesn’t anyone see any of you? Wouldn’t Death Helpers be a known fact by now?”

“They do pop up in literature from time to time—”

“Cut the shit, Garrett.” Nora gets up from her chair.

“Someone was there when your grandmother died. You just don’t remember.”

She slams the palm of her hand onto her desk in one of the more dramatic displays of her adult life. “You think I could forget something like that?”

He stands, but he doesn’t move any closer. “Death protects itself. It’s not that you don’t remember, it’s that you’ve been made to forget.”

“Like Men in Black ?”

“The same principle, but no. It’s closer to some kind of hypnosis. I’m not sure how it works, science-wise.”

“Do you not perform it?”

“Yes, but I’m not a psychologist. Or a neurologist. I just follow the procedure.”

She starts to pace around the store, circling the display of caskets. “Explain it, then. Walk me through an example.”

“I show up to an appointment.”

“An appointment? So, it’s scheduled?”

“Yes.”

“You know in advance when a person is going to die?”

“Yes.”

She stops in front of the brown casket in the middle. “Do you know when I’m going to die?”

“No, I don’t have the security clearance to search the database. Only senior directors can do that.”

“Senior directors of what? Of Death?”

“Yes.”

She continues to walk in circles, as if it might encourage her brain to go into overdrive and understand all of this nonsense.

“I have a scheduler at the main office in North Dakota.”

“Death is based in North Dakota?”

“Yes, Dickinson, North Dakota.”

“As in Emily? Is that a joke?”

“No. Well, it might be someone’s joke, but it’s not mine.” He shakes his head as if to clear his mind. “Let me finish.”

She crosses her arms over her chest.

“I go to the appointments on my calendar. It depends on the situation, but I usually go in and tell the person it’s time. Sometimes, they have questions. Sometimes, I just wait with them until it happens.”

“Until what happens?”

“Well, I can only communicate with this side of things, so it’s hard to say exactly, but the heart slows, and they see, for lack of a better term, a door to the other side, and they go through it.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is true. I promise. All of this is true.” He takes a few steps forward, so she walks around to the other side of the casket in front of her. A few steps closer to the door.

“What about the people who die suddenly?”

“Someone is there with them.”

“That cannot be true, Garrett. My parents drove their car into a tree on a backwoods country road. No one was there.”

“Someone was there, Nora. Someone is always there.”

“Who pays you?” If she’s learned anything from TV, she knows that to find the answers, follow the money.

“What do you mean?”

“Who pays your salary?”

“The same people who pay your salary,” Garrett says. “Death is an industry.”

“Don’t try to bring me into this.”

“Look at your invoices, Nora. There are fees for everything. Death always gets its cut.”

“This is insanity.”

“It sounds crazy, but you know me. You know I’m telling the truth.” He walks toward her until they have only a dusty brown casket between them.

None of this can be real, but why does it feel like he’s telling her the truth? “This is why you were looking for Frank when I met you.”

“Yes.” His eyes light up.

“You got so weird when I asked you about it when we went to get ice cream.”

“I couldn’t tell you anything, and I didn’t know you yet.”

“You needed to know me better so you could lie to me properly?”

“Do you think I could have told you this on our first date? Is that what you would’ve done?”

Nora thinks back on everything he’s said about work. Every place he’s claimed to go. The whole relationship spreads out like puzzle pieces in her head, and she starts putting the corners together to force it into the proper shape.

“How do you not get caught? If I knew something was going on, surely someone else must have suspected it.”

“Like I said, I don’t know the science of it, but I imagine it’s like a haze settling in the area, and it becomes pretty easy to convince someone to remember things a certain way.”

She knows the answer to this already, but she needs him to say it: “Where were you that Tuesday night?”

He takes a breath before he answers: “I got called in at the last minute to a car wreck. I was with Ethan.”

She doesn’t know why, but this, after everything, fills her eyes with tears. “You were with him when he died?”

“Yes.”

“Was he in pain?”

“No. It happened fast.”

“You stayed until the ambulance came?”

He nods. “He wasn’t—he had been thrown from the car. It was dark, and I wanted to make sure they found him. I don’t know. That’s not part of my job, but young people are hard.”

“Yeah, they are.” She lets out some of the tension she’s been holding in all night. “My grandpa’s friend saw you there. He drives a tow truck and had to pick up the car.”

“I guess I was bound to slip up somewhere.”

“Why didn’t you erase their memories?”

“I don’t like doing it. I didn’t think about them being connected to you. I didn’t know you knew him until you told me.”

“This is Alabama. You should assume everyone is connected until you find out otherwise.”

He shrugs, exhaustion plain on his face.

“Why didn’t you erase mine?”

“What do you mean?”

“You let me know all of this. About Frank. Running into you at the nursing home. You could have erased all of it, and I wouldn’t have anything to put together.”

He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If you wanted to keep it a secret, you aren’t doing a good job.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“I’m really trying to understand this, Garrett.” She leans down to rest her head on her arms on the brown maple casket.

“I know. It’s a lot. But I don’t want to keep secrets from you. I was always going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”

She lifts her head to see him leaning on the other side of the casket, his forehead a few inches from hers. She knows he wants to touch her, and honestly, she wants that, too. It’s been a terrible day, and she wants him to tell her everything is going to be fine.

“If you have more questions, I want to answer them,” Garrett says. “If not, I have a question for you.”

“I have a thousand questions, but you can go first.”

“Will you tell me what you’re thinking?”

“I don’t know whether my boyfriend has serious mental issues or if he’s the Grim Reaper.”

“A little of both.”

She rolls her eyes and takes a few steps away from him.

“I remember what it was like when I got dragged to the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, to have this conversation. I didn’t believe it until I saw it.”

“Please don’t say you want to show me.”

“I’m not allowed,” he says. “I’m not even allowed to have this conversation.”

“Then why are we having it?” Her eyes fill with tears again. “Why are you doing this to me?”

He comes to her then, slowly, and she knows she should tell him no, but she doesn’t. He puts his arms around her, and the feelings pour out. Garrett made her think soulmates could be real, and that maybe he could be hers, but what if it’s not Garrett? What if it’s Death?

“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know what to make of all of this.”

“Nora, this is my job. It doesn’t have to change things with us. Nothing has to change.”

“I think it already has.”

He tenses. “What does that mean?”

“I just need to think. Say all of this is true, and you’re not having a psychotic break.” She gestures at the room full of caskets. “I used to be a normal person with a normal life. Now every day of my life is about death, and you’re telling me you’re responsible for it.”

“You’re giving me a little too much credit.”

“You walk into a room full of people begging for a miracle, and you end a person’s life.”

“Everyone dies, Nora. It’s how life works.” He says this gently, willing her to believe that he’s a good person. “I’m there so they don’t have to go through it alone. Being there with someone in a moment like that is hard to put into words, but it’s important that no one has to go through it on their own, no matter what your family is like or how little or how much money you have. Being able to provide this for people is a gift for them and for me.”

“My parents had half their lives left, and someone like you sat next to them and watched as it ended. What kind of job is that?”

“Would you rather someone die alone and scared?”

“I would rather you be a drug dealer.”

He takes her face in his hands. “You know you can trust me, Nora.”

“I’m trying,” she whispers.

“You want me to go?” The pain in his eyes and in his voice almost changes her mind. She wants to get over it. She wants to apologize for doubting him. She wants to forget this ever happened and go back to how they were. She wants to do anything except what she does next.

“Please go.”

“I want you to promise you’re not shutting me out.”

“I need some space right now.” They stare at each other for a moment too long, long enough for her heart to break a little more.

She kisses his cheek, and a tear escapes, trickling down her face until she catches it with her knuckle.

He walks toward the door and turns back. “I hate leaving you alone knowing you’re upset.”

“I’m used to being alone and upset.”

“Nora, please. I love you. Don’t give up on me.”

The bell over the door rings, and he’s gone.