CHAPTER TWENTY
UNDER AN OMINOUS SKY
Me: My uncle Charlie is a fucking weird-ass dude.
Meg: LOL, be nice!
Me: I’m just saying, I’ve been sitting here, drinking coffee with him for twenty minutes in the most awkward silence ever experienced, and he hasn’t made one attempt at having a conversation.
Meg: And YOU haven’t tried talking to him because …?
Me: Social experiment.
Meg: Oh my God, Noah. Don’t be mean.
Me: And what exactly should I say to him?
Me: “Hey, dig any good holes lately?”
Meg: Oh, I don’t know, Detective … you could … hmmm … ask him about a certain funeral home maybe?
I looked up from my phone screen to glance across the table at Charlie Corbin, the man my aunt had chosen to spend her life with.
His wavy hair hung in curtains against the sides of his long face today, not in the loose knot he’d worn last night.
He looked like he wanted to hide, to cover himself with all that hair, and I wondered if it was me.
If I made him nervous. If my presence set him too far outside his comfort zone and stable routine.
Judging by the way he wouldn’t meet my eye, I guessed I was right.
Someone else might’ve considered him suspicious, that his demeanor was off-putting and questionable.
But I knew better. He was a victim of his own traumatic past. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
He hadn’t said as much, nor had Aunt Stormy confirmed, but it didn’t take an expert profiler to figure that one out.
There was likely an anxiety disorder in there as well, maybe even agoraphobia to an extent.
And now, sitting here, crowding his space and penetrating the safe world he had built for himself, I felt bad for not booking a hotel room instead.
Still, Meg had made a good point.
Uncle Charlie must’ve had some dealings with The Llewellyn Family Funeral Home, considering he’d been the groundskeeper at this cemetery for however many years—well over a decade at least. It might be helpful to ask a few questions.
But I didn’t want to raise suspicion about why I was really here, out of fear that he’d talk to Aunt Stormy, who’d then call my parents.
I didn’t need anyone worrying needlessly.
Me: He’d ask why I’m asking.
Meg: Good point.
Meg: You could mention that your friend needs to do something there. I don’t know. Hold on. Let me think for a second.
Me: No, wait. I got it.
Meg: What?
I cleared my throat and lowered my phone, startling Charlie from the important task of draining his second cup of coffee. He looked up, lips shut and eyes alert.
“Sorry,” I said, slipping my phone into my jacket pocket. “I was just gonna say, I guess I should get going.”
He blinked for a moment, as if to gather his bearings, then nodded. “Where, um … where did you say you were headed today?”
“To see an old friend,” I said. “But he had a death in the family last night—”
“Oh, that’s … that’s too bad.” Charlie’s brow furrowed, a solemn expression on his face.
“Yeah, it was unexpected,” I said, realizing acutely how easy it was to lie. “So, I thought I’d do a little sightseeing until he was finished at the funeral home.”
I hoped Charlie would ask which funeral home it was. I hoped he’d show interest. But he didn’t. He only nodded, letting the conversation enter an awkward lull, like I’d given him more information than he’d asked for.
Shit.
“I told him I’d take him to coffee after,” I said with a sheepish laugh and a shrug, then stood from the chair. “Like that makes it better, right?”
He grunted, offering a sad quirk of his lips. “It’s nice to have someone though. F-for him, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding. “That’s true. Hey, do you happen to know where, uh … shit, hold on. I need to double-check the name of this place.”
I huffed an awkward laugh as I pulled my phone out again and pretended to use it, tapping around the screen a few times before saying, “The, uh … fuck, I don’t know how to pronounce this.”
Charlie chuckled quietly. “Let me guess. Llewellyn?”
I laughed with him. “How do you spell that?”
“L-L-E-W—”
“Yep. That’s the one,” I said, stuffing my phone away hastily. “I mean, I could put it in the GPS, but, you know, sometimes, that shit gets me even more lost. Google gets me driving in circles.”
“I know how that goes,” he grumbled with a shake of his head. Then he proceeded to give me directions to the funeral home on my radar.
“Thanks, man,” I said with a grateful smile. “You been there?”
“A few times.”
“Nice place?”
Don’t ask too many questions. Remember, it doesn’t matter to you. You’re making small talk, then leaving.
Charlie shrugged. “It’s all right. I don’t do much with the funeral homes themselves though. I mostly just dig the graves.”
“Ah, right,” I said, then patted myself down, making sure I had my keys. “Okay, I’ll—”
“I know the directors a little bit though,” he went on, now also standing. “I think, um … I think they’re brothers? Or cousins maybe? Nice enough, I guess, but—”
He glanced at me. Then, with a forced cough and a deep swallow, he rubbed his palms against his jacket. “Anyway,” he muttered, “you can follow me to the gate. In case you get lost.”
I smiled, wondering what he was going to say before catching himself. “Yeah,” I said. “Wouldn’t wanna spend the day driving in circles here.”
***
Nice enough, but …
But what?
I’d been thinking about what Charlie had said the entire ride from his cemetery to the next on the other side of town. What had he meant by it, and why couldn’t I shake the feeling that it was somehow important?
I’ll get him talking again, I thought as I parallel parked outside the cemetery.
Charlie was a closed book, and getting him in a chatty mood wasn’t an easy feat, but I’d figure something out. It felt significant that I did.
But first, I had to pay my respects to the lost life I felt somehow responsible for.
I got out of the car and stood beneath a gloomy sky, streaked with clouds outlined in foreboding black. It didn’t look good, but I had to work with it.
Now or never, I told myself.
Although my stomach quickly tied itself into a thousand impossible knots, I approached the twin stone pillars standing on either side of the cemetery entrance, left wide open without any visible way of closing it off to the public after hours.
The pillars were old, crumbling in parts, and from that glance alone, I knew this place wasn't as maintained or cared for as Charlie's cemetery.
I wandered through the entrance, looking from side to side for any sign of life—no pun intended.
Any indication of a groundskeeper or security guard, someone to point me in the right direction.
But the small parking lot was empty, and so was the tiny booth where a security guard might've sat if there was one.
In other words, the place was dead.
And this time, the pun was very much intended.
“Hmm,” I grunted, unsure of why I found this observation as unnerving as the sky above, but I did.
I stuffed my hand into my jeans pocket and clutched my phone as the other hand lifted to touch the grip of my gun, tucked into the waistband of my jeans, concealed by the hem of my T-shirt.
Warning bells rang through my head. Intuition urged my feet to turn around. But I proceeded down the path of the small graveyard to search for the dead man I'd come for anyway because I knew that was what a good detective would do—to ignore every human desire to run when facing fear.
The air was still as I moved with caution, swinging my gaze from left to right every few steps.
It was silly to believe that a cemetery would be a crowded hotspot on a weekend, but to be as empty as it was felt just as strange, and, fuck, I was freaking myself out more and more with every passing minute.
Thoughts of ghosts and apparitions flooded my mind, and I was certain that something sinister was waiting for me behind every weathered stone.
It wasn't long before I realized my hands were trembling, and I dared to shut my eyes and huff out a long breath as I gave my head a shake.
I'm being stupid.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled, pressing my lips together and willing my rattled heart to settle.
A crunch of gravel rang out from my right, and I gasped, my eyelids flying open, my hand holding tight to my gun.
At first, my bewildered, unfocused gaze saw nothing but unkept trees and headstones.
But then I saw a man hurrying along the path, his head down and his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.
He wore a brown leather jacket despite the summer heat and a black baseball cap on his head, his face hidden from view.
He looked cold, or like he was bracing against the weather that hadn't yet come, and he hurried past me without so much as a glance.
Suspicious, was my first observation. He looks suspicious.
I turned and continued to stare at his back, trying to remember if there'd been any other cars parked on the street, wondering if he'd walked. My gaze narrowed as I focused on him and the entrance to the cemetery.
He left, steered to the right, and disappeared from view.
“Weird,” I said aloud, though maybe it wasn't.
There were businesses in the area and several blocks of houses to the south. He could've easily come from any of those places without breaking much of a sweat.
But in a jacket? In this weather?
I rolled my eyes toward the blackened clouds.
I was looking too deep into everything, I realized.
Charlie's cut-off words, empty graveyards, and the intentions of random mourners.
It was stupid. I was stupid, and I needed to get on with this investigation, which seemed to feel more and more unnecessary and ridiculous by the second.
Then, without allowing myself another moment of hesitation, I continued on down the path to find the grave of Tomas Nolan.
***
“Hey.”
Meg's voice sounded sleepy on the line, like she'd just woken up.