Page 64 of A Soft Kiss in Summer
“I don’t know.”
She was on her feet before they could speculate any further and knocked on the door to the doctor’s private residence.She could hear movement moments later, then the doctor opened the door.
“Is everything all right?”he asked, looking over her shoulder to where Archie lay.
“Archie is fine,” she said, answering his question.“I just wanted to know when someone in town dies, do they bring the body to you?”
He shook his head.“Not unless they’re still breathing.If they’re already dead, they’d take them over to Burt Saunders, the undertaker.He’s one street over and at the end of the road.”
She didn’t wait for another word and turned on her heel, heading out the door before really knowing what she was going to do when she reached the undertaker.
He wasn’t hard to find.Coffins were lined up against the building at the end of the road, just like the doctor had said, and wooden planks were sitting nearby, hammered into crosses, some carved with small saying and just waiting for names and dates.
There wasn’t anyone inside the building when she stepped inside, but she could hear someone humming from somewhere deeper in the building.“Hello?”she said, shutting the door behind her.
The humming stopped, footsteps echoing in the silence before a man with greasy, dirty blonde hair stepped from the room directly in front of her.
“Afternoon,” he said.
He wore an apron over his clothes, splotches of red covering the gray fabric.She didn’t even want to speculate what it was.The stench in the building told her without asking.
She cleared her throat and gave him a tight smile.“Have they brought Edwin Wright’s body to you yet?”
He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head a fraction.“They have.”
She blew out the breath she’d been holding.“I’d like to see him.”
His eyebrows rose.His mouth opened as if to say something, but she cut him off before he could.“I know he’s not pretty to look at, but I won’t believe he’s dead if I don’t see it for myself.”
“Are you his kin?”
She could lie.Probably should, but lying was what got her into this mess to begin with.“No.I’m not, but my husband has been accused of murdering him and I want to see for myself that he is indeed dead.”
He studied her a moment before shrugging his shoulders.“Fine by me, but I’m warning you, it’s not something a lady should be seeing.”
“I understand.”
He led her to the room he’d come from and she stopped by the door.A body lay on a tall work table and it took every ounce of courage she had to take a step closer.
She baby-stepped it across the room, her gaze scanning the body before she got the courage to look up at his face.
And instantly wished she hadn’t.
Her stomach revolted the moment she saw what remained of Edwin’s face.Whoever shot him had put a bullet in his temple and it had exited through the side of his cheek.
There wasn’t much there to look at and as her stomach kept rolling, all she could think was, it wasn’t him.
The undertaker opened a door on the other side of the table and she wasted no time running to it.She’d barely cleared the stoop when the contents of her stomach came back up.
When her heaving stopped, she sucked in deep breaths and accepted the cup of water the undertaker handed her before rinsing her mouth.
Her eyes were watering when she stepped back into the building and looked at the body.She avoided the face this time and focused on the rest of him.
She noticed then that his clothes were tight.She knew a body started to bloat after death, but she didn’t know it happened so soon and said as much to the undertaker.
“It usually takes a while.Heat plays a role in it, though.”He tugged on the jacket Edwin was wearing.It wouldn’t even close in the front.
To her, the suit looked ill-fitting.As if it were too small.She stepped closer and paid more attention to the body.The fingernails were bitten off clean to the quick, and there was dirt crusted around the nail beds.Edwin was always meticulously groomed, with filed nails, and never dirty.
