Page 29 of The Burnt
“Declan wants me to set up my own office space. Well, it won’t be an office yet—more of a corner outside his, but he said we can get someone to throw up some walls and a door when we get some more money coming in.”
He realised that he probably shouldn’t be discussing the company’s finances with her. “Forget I said that last part.”
“It’s forgotten.”
“Good. Now, Mrs B said I should ask you about old office furniture that you might have stored away in the basement. Do you really have some down there that we could…borrow?”
She smiled. “No, but I’ve got some that you can have. Wanna go have a look?” She walked toward the back of the shop.
“Is it okay just to leave the café unattended?” he asked.
“It’s late enough. No one other than you or Sam would be coming around. Just lock the front door and flip the ‘Closed’ sign around. Now, let me show you what I have in the basement.”
As they walked toward the cellar steps, Gwen asked, “What do you need?”
“It’s really just a corner of the main office space, so…a desk and chair. Maybe a filing cabinet and a bookcase.”
Gwen flicked on the basement light switch then headed down. “Let’s see what we can do for you. So…getting your own space.I’m proud of how far you’ve come in the last six months. Anyone that can put up with Declan for that long without walking out has accomplished a lot.”
Charlie turned the corner into what appeared to be a furniture storage room. There were stacks of drawers and several disassembled desks piled on top of each other. A row of dark wooden bookcases lined one wall and a corral of chairs and filing cabinets filled the rest of the room.
“It’s all been here since I set up shop and it’s just taking up space. I’ve always meant to have a huge garage sale, but I never got around to it. Might as well start with you. What’ll you have?”
Charlie started at one end and worked his way to the other. He pulled together the pieces of a beautiful old oak desk which had a single bank of drawers. He located a matching chair.
“What about this to go with it?” Gwen said, patting the top of a five-tier oak barrister’s bookcase. “The glass on the doors is still intact.”
“It’s gorgeous,” he said, running his hands over the dusty surface. “I think it would look perfect up there.”
Charlie plopped down in the leather-upholstered wooden chair he’d chosen, spinning it around. It would do perfectly until he got something more ergonomic. Or maybe he would just keep this one. It felt…right.
Gwen stood in the dim light, smiling. “It all looks very Sam Spade. All you need is the trench coat and the fedora.”
“Any idea whose furniture it was?” Charlie asked, patting the chair.
She smiled mischievously. “Well, the guys who owned the building before me were morticians. I assume it was theirs.”
The word ‘morticians’ echoed in Charlie’s ears.
Gwen continued, “Didn’t you notice the sign carved into the stone above the door leading up to Declan’s office? ‘Hallowell Brothers, Undertakers’?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Well, it’s just ‘Hallowell Brothers, Under’ right now,” Gwen continued. “The rest is hidden under my sign. What’s now the café was once their funeral chapel. They had their casket showroom upstairs, and their office was where Declan has his. The third floor was where they stored the extra coffins and I think they prepped the bodies down here in the basement. In fact, they used to have a retort over there where they cremated the bodies. The exhaust flue came in handy when I moved in and put in the bakery.”
Charlie shuddered.
Gwen continued. “If you look at the floor in Declan’s office, you’ll see a patch of newer flooring. The same up in his apartment. They used to have a dumbwaiter for caskets so they wouldn’t have to carry them down the stairs.”
Charlie stared at her. “My beautiful new office space was once covered in coffins?”
Gwen shrugged. “I suspect this building probably has a few ghosts lingering around, but I’ve never seen any. Have you?”
Charlie paused.“Uh…nope.”
Charlie could tell she didn’t believe him.
“Oh, come on now,” she said, breaking into a laugh. “You, of all people can’t believe in that, can you?”
