Excerpt
Casket Case
Chapter 1 The bell over the door tolls for Mrs. Atkins, Nora’s first customer of the day. She marches through the showroom, past the dusty model merchandise dying for her attention, for her affection, for the sinking weight of a decaying body.
Mrs. Atkins hefts her designer handbag onto the counter, ready to be assisted. “Lord, Eleanora, you look just like your mother standing back there.”
To be fair, Nora’s mother did spend a lot of time behind that counter. She had helped Nora’s father paint and install the counter after they found it at a yard sale, freshly ripped from someone else’s kitchen to make room for the new and improved. That was the year they painted the walls a blue-tinged eggshell and installed the track lighting to properly show off their new caskets.
“No one wants to buy them if they can’t see them,” Billy Clanton had said.
Anita Clanton wanted to tell her husband that the models were a bad idea, that this was one of the few retail situations where customers did not want to be near the merchandise. She told him the same thing when he brought in urns and cremation jewelry to display.
Nora Clanton doesn’t have an opinion. Not yet anyway.
“How can I help you?” She tries to use her best salesperson tone, but some people don’t have one of those.
“I went to Jim Anderson’s funeral last week,” Mrs. Atkins begins. “And his daughter-in-law, bless her heart, had picked out the ugliest gold casket I’ve ever seen. When I saw it, I knew I had to pick out my own for when the time comes.”
Most customers can describe caskets only in subjective terms. They want it to feel peaceful. They want it to match a personality. They’re worried it will clash with a certain outfit. Jim Anderson’s daughter-in-law thought the gold was a classy touch.
Marilyn Atkins sings soprano in the choir at the First Baptist Church and never misses a Sunday. She’s also healthy as a horse. Some customers are so bothered by the macabre that they choose a casket in the first ten minutes, but not Mrs. Atkins. Nora spends a hefty chunk of her day (one hour and seventeen minutes) pointing out the most tasteful options and listening to Mrs. Atkins’s gold bracelets clang against the counter as she finds something wrong with all of them.
“Something like this,” Mrs. Atkins says, shoving a stack of printouts in front of Nora’s face. The first page has a casket circled in red.
Nora releases a breath from her body, and she wishes she could go with it. “That’s mahogany. Just like this one.” She flips wearily to the very first casket she showed Mrs. Atkins, back when she still had an ounce of patience.
“Is that one mahogany, too?” Mrs. Atkins squints at both pictures.
“It’s the same model. See?” Nora points out the number on both caskets.
“Well, I’m glad I brought these pictures. Otherwise, we never would have found it.”
Nora considers the model caskets lining the showroom and if crawling into one might allow her into another world or dimension or place that is not here. But she needs Mrs. Atkins’s business, so she leaves that adventure for another day while she finishes the sale.
As she signs her name to the paperwork for a solid mahogany casket with cream satin lining, Mrs. Atkins asks, “Are you still living in that house?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her parents’ house has been in Nora’s family for a couple of generations.
Mrs. Atkins’s family would never be on that side of Rabbittown, but she hears things like everybody else. “It must feel so empty! That house is meant for a family.” She slides the paperwork across the counter and gathers her purse to leave. “You haven’t found any nice men since you’ve been back?”
“None that stick.” She can’t be sure what Mrs. Atkins will say next, but she knows it will be one of the three types of responses everyone says to single women over thirty:
1. You’re lucky. Husbands are the worst.
2. It will happen when you least expect it.
3. Don’t forget your biological clock.
“It will happen when you least expect it,” Mrs. Atkins says. “That’s how these things go.”
“So I’ve been told.” She stacks the paperwork together with a touch of aggression and attempts to smile in Mrs. Atkins’s direction.
Mrs. Atkins doesn’t notice; she hasn’t noticed other people in years. “You aren’t getting any younger,” she says, wagging her finger as if scolding a child.
“Thank you for coming in,” Nora says, making her way around the counter to shoo Mrs. Atkins out the door. “See you at church.”
Mrs. Atkins walks toward the door but stops short in front of the light blue casket at the front of the showroom to run her finger across the top. “You might have a word with your cleaning staff, Eleanora. There’s an inch of dust on this one.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to do that.”
“You know, I went to a visitation at one of those Prestige Funeral Homes up in Huntsville, and you might want to stop by one of them.” She glances around the showroom, which hasn’t changed much since it was first built. “You could use some updating. I’d never buy from a company like that after knowing your mama for my whole life, but it wouldn’t hurt to borrow an idea or two from them.”
Nora stares at the blue casket as hard as she can to keep from rolling her eyes. Prestige has made a fortune buying up funeral homes and related suppliers in the area. They convince the small businesses that they have their best interests in mind, taking over the “boring” parts of running a business so that the staff can do more to serve customers. In reality, once the sale goes through, Prestige fires most of the staff. Pooling resources is great for the business and not so great for the family who just sold their life’s work to someone who turned around and axed them.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mrs. Atkins nods briskly, and the bell tolls again as she marches out onto the sidewalk.
The administrative part of running Rabbittown Casket Company takes about ten minutes as long as Nora is caught up, and Nora doesn’t have much else to do, so she’s always caught up. Customers rarely come in without warning, except for the occasional high school kid on a dare.
The store used to be open six days a week, so her parents had mounted a television to the wall to watch Alabama football. Once Nora left for college, her parents decided they might like to have a social life, so they stopped opening on Saturdays, but the television stayed. That television is the reason Nora is now addicted to
General Hospital. Nora is sitting with her legs propped up on the desk, watching Carly yell at Sonny for what has to be the millionth time, when a tall man in a suit appears in front of the counter. She jumps, and not gracefully.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the stranger says.
“I should have been paying more attention.” Nora’s bare feet fumble around underneath the desk to find the shoes they’d ditched. She sinks lower in the chair until her toes hit the fake leather. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Whatever you’re watching must be good.”
Nora starts to apologize more thoroughly, but he stops her with something close to a smile. Nora notices that his nose is a little crooked, and he has a faded scar on one cheek. “I get sucked into these shows.”
“My grandmother used to record them on VHS in case she missed anything.” He gestures to Sonny Corinthos on the screen. “He looks exactly the same.”
A mobster points a gun at Sonny, and Carly screams, but Sonny doesn’t flinch. Nora hits the power button on the remote.
“You don’t have to turn it off on my account.”
“I can watch it later. Besides, Sonny will never die.”
“Everyone dies. I would think you know that better than most.”
Nora is about to ask how he knows about her family, but then she remembers they’re standing in her casket store. “I’m sure you didn’t come in here to talk about
General Hospital. May I help you with something?”
“I’m not really a customer. I’m looking for Pearl Drive, and Google Maps brought me here.” He holds his phone out to Nora, but she doesn’t need it.
“You’re close,” Nora says, as she walks around the desk and takes in his height and his expensive suit. She can’t decide if he’s actually handsome or if it’s been too long since she’s seen a breathing man in a tailored suit. “It’s more of a driveway than a road, though. Are you sure you have the right address?”
“I’m looking for Pearl Café.”
