Page 36 of Joker in the Pack

“Dead. On the couch. It was a Monday, so she’d been there over the weekend. All swelled up, he said, just like a beached whale.”

I clutched at my stomach as I ran for the restroom at the back of the café, and luckily, I made it to the toilet before I lost my lunch. Aunt Ellie had died on the sofa? The sofa I’d been sitting on? Hell, I’d even slept on it that first night. The mere thought of that had me heaving again.

“Are you okay?” Daisy passed me a handful of paper towels.

I wiped at my mouth, but it was a few minutes before I felt well enough to walk back out to my table. Even then, the sight of my half-eaten food nearly sent me running back.

“It’s just the sofa…” I explained, and Daisy clapped a hand over her mouth.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise.”

“How could you? I didn’t even know she’d died in the house. Someone told me the ambulance crew broke down the door to get to her, so I assumed they took her to hospital and she died there.”

“I think the ambulance was just a formality.”

“I have to get that sofa out of my living room.” The mere thought of it kept my stomach churning.

Daisy rose to her feet. “The lunchtime crowd are all gone now. How about I close up for half an hour and give you a hand?”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“It’s the least I can do after the whole…” She gestured at the restroom. “You know.”

Back at Lilac Cottage, we donned rubber gloves and stared at the evil brown monstrosity. I gave one arm a tentative tug, but it barely moved.

Daisy wrinkled her nose. “Even with two of us, this is going to be difficult.”

“This sofa is leaving the house today, even if I have to hack it to pieces with nail scissors.”

“Do you have two pairs?”

No, but I did have a brainwave. “I think Aunt Ellie had a saw in all the stuff she bought. I saw it a few days ago, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

I’d grown immune to the piles of peril, but Daisy’s gasp as she followed me into the dining room reminded me just how bad they were.

“Holy crap! I mean, I imagined Mrs. Rigby had a lot of nicknacks, but this is unreal.”

“It was worse than this when I first arrived. Hold on, I think the saw was somewhere near the window.”

I clambered over a couple of boxes containing George Foreman-esque grills, cursed under my breath as I stubbed my toe on a fancy plant stand, and emerged triumphant.

“Here it is.”

“Isn’t that a wood saw?”

I didn’t know one type of saw from another. When we’d had to select our classes, I’d done home economics instead of woodwork.

“If it can cut through wood, surely it must be able to go through a sofa?”

“I guess.”

Over the next hour, we sweated and swore as we sawed the disgusting thing in half, straight down the middle. Now that I knew that parts of the pattern most likely belonged to bodily fluids, I felt queasy the whole time.

Stuffing flew everywhere and one of my eyes nearly got taken out by a wayward spring, but finally, we got the whole thing into the back garden next to the tumbledown shed I’d discovered last week. I had no idea what to do with the sofa from there, but at least it was out of the house. I’d worry about the next step later. Over a glass of wine with Maddie, most likely.

Daisy glanced at her watch. “I really should get back to the café now.”

“Thanks so much for your help, and I’m sorry it took so long.”

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