Page 3 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
The caller hung up, leaving Lily in a state of icky bafflement.Sure, her whole thing as a wedding planner was slightly kooky, off-kilter, inclusive weddings, but arranging a marriage to someone dead was pushing the decorative envelope a bit. Maybe the caller had been trying some sort of tax-evasion thing. Or some teenagers were hosting a pizza and prank-call party.
Oh well. Lily couldn’t spend too much time worrying about it – she had unpacking to do. But first, a soak in her new clawfoot tub.
All’s Fair in Love and Mortuary Studies
Mort
Mort’s week was off to a lousy start. Literally. No one wants to learn that the family business is overrun by termites, especially within just a few months of taking it over. It would have been nice for Gramps to mention the whole persistent woodlouse invasion thing, but then, he couldn’t really fault the old guy – he should have retired twenty years ago. He probably would have, if he’d been able to find anyone to take over the business, and damn had Gramps tried. But it takes a special kind of person to become a funeral director. Or in Mort’s case, a special kind of failure. Mort had given himself until age thirty to make his dream of becoming a concert pianist reality, but life had a habit of running the clock down. So now, here he was, doing his bit to help Gramps out by sending off grizzled old gents and smart-mouthed widows and a worrying number of motorcyclists into the Sweet Hereafter. Or wherever it was that people went once they closed their eyes that final time. Mort had spent a good deal of time considering the whole thing, but still hadn’t come up with an answer he was happy with.
‘At least you gave yourself time to pursue your dream,’Gramps had said. ‘Not everyone gets that. And there’s still the organ.’
The organ Gramps had been referring to was the one inside the funeral home upon which a young Mort had belted out his early efforts at Mendelssohn, Mozart and Beethoven. (Funeral attendance numbers had, thankfully, improved as he had.) Mort still played it – in fact, even more so these days, now that he was living in the drab apartment above the funeral home and had ready access to it. Gramps, on the other hand, insisted on remaining in the huge, dark house that he’d raised Mort in. Mort loved the house as much as Gramps did, even though it was a death trap (to be fair, everything in a funeral director’s eyes was a death trap), and the maintenance was becoming too much for Gramps to handle. And for Mort to handle. Every spare day that Mort had was now spent hammering at loose boards or dealing with dodgy wiring or righting a tree felled by a savage gust of ocean wind.
He’d been trying to get Gramps out of the house and into somewhere more manageable, like one of the townhouses in the village, but Gramps was as stubborn as, well, Mort was. But Angela was savvy – she’d use her realtor’s wiles to entice Gramps away from the house and into somewhere he wasn’t likely to fall down the carpeted stairs or get squashed by a crystal chandelier or suffocate while trying to draw the extremely thick velvet blinds, all of which were very real possibilities. (Mort judiciously read each and every coroner’s report, and had a deep awareness of all the ways a house might try to kill you.)
Mort’s phone pinged, almost giving him a heart attack.Just a mild panic response, Mort,he told himself. After all, he was at low risk for heart attacks, and the body-weight exercises he did every morning were designed to ward off an early death.
Delivered, flashed an app on his screen.Signed for by… a squiggle.
Mort frowned. That squiggle should have been made byhishand, but it was decidedly not. He’d absolutely not signed for the package, because right now he was sitting at The Hot Pot reading over the sheet music for the silent movie showing at Rerunning Up That Hill later tonight. Unless Mort had a doppelganger running around the village, either someone had forged his signature, or Roddy, the village’s delivery guy, had slipped up. (This was not unheard of, given that Roddy was well into his eighties. But Roddy was a nice guy, and people gave him the benefit of the doubt. Especially when he brought treats for their dogs, which was often.)
‘All done there, hon?’ Dierdre, the owner of The Hot Pot, was swinging by with a moon-shaped teapot and a stack of clattering half-moon teacups. Dierdre was a town treasure, known for her colourful tattoos, her colourful language, and her colourful crockery collection, which she’d inherited from some distant hoarder aunt.
Mort gathered up his plate and teacup, setting them into the yellow tub atop the heavily decoupaged credenza along the far wall. Dierdre’s decor was entirely too bright for Mort, but she did make the best tea and the fanciest croissants in town. ‘Business calls.’
‘Anotherdeath?’
‘Worse: a misdelivery.’
Dierdre made a face. ‘At least it’s not solar sales.’
Mort snorted. ‘If they come to the door again, wewillbe talking about a death.’
‘I, for one, would be happy to give you an alibi, hon!’ Dierdre waved as Mort headed out the door, stopping briefly to give a belly rub to Jenkins, the café’s resident terrier. Then he hurried up the wide promenade towards the funeral home, dashing through tourists’ vacation selfies and interrupting a game ofpathway Connect Four – something that the town advertised as a charming diversion that could result in a surprise dinner voucher discount, and which Mort personally thought was a public menace.
‘Hey!’ A dad with a sweater knotted around his neck scowled through expensive glasses. ‘You made me lose concentration.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were playing a critical game of chess against Garry Kasparov,’ muttered Mort.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing, nothing. Enjoy your stay.’ Mort, who hadn’t slowed one iota, waved vaguely as he hustled up the promenade. Thankfully he was no stranger to the journey, and was barely winded by the time the funeral home was in sight.
Well, not the funeral home precisely, but rather the red-and-blue stripes of the fumigation tenting covering the funeral home. He shook his head – they couldn’t have gone with a stately black? After all, fumigation was a death-related business, too.
‘Almost done here, bud,’ said Franco, the fumigation worker sitting on a bougainvillea-drenched rock wall, Ninja Turtle lunchbox in hand. ‘We should be able to take this off tomorrow, get you back in business.’ He took a bite of a peanut butter and honey sandwich with the crusts cut off. ‘Accidentally grabbed my kid’s lunch. Not bad. Lunchable?’
He held out a package of cheese and chopped ham. Mort shook his head.
‘Grape juice?’
Mort shook his head again. Vehemently.
With a shrug, Franco popped open the juice box, draining it in one sip.
‘Did you receive any deliveries today?’
‘What, through that?’ Franco nodded at the massive tent, which was wafting up and down in the breeze. A few pigeons hadtaken up residence on top and were enjoying the ride. ‘Maybe they went next door. There’s a new gal.’
