Page 42 of Done Dirty
“We had a case.”
“We always have a case.”
He smiled and set his mug down and crossed the kitchen and kissed me—not a quick kiss, but the slow kind that meant he remembered exactly how the night had ended. His hands were warm on my waist and I leaned into him for a moment and let myself just be there.
“You smell good,” he said against my hair.
“I used your shampoo.”
“I know.” He pulled back and looked at me, and his eyes went to the top for a half second and back up. “I like that shirt.”
“I think you like what’s inside it.”
He smirked and said, “We need to get going. We’ve got a stop to make before we meet Sheri Downs.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I finished my coffee while he rinsed his mug, and we left before Doug was up.
The county looked different this early. We turned off Heresy Road and headed toward town. I was curious where we were headed, but I knew not to press.
We passed swaths of land and farmhouses before we got closer into town. We passed the Presbyterian church and the graveyard, and were heading in the direction of the funeral home. I exhaled slowly when I realized the anxiety of passing by had me holding my breath.
Jack noticed.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just watching,” I said. We drove past the funeral home without stopping, and I let myself look at what was left of it as we went by. Not much. The roof was gone and the upper floors had collapsed. What was left was three exterior walls and a pile of charred debris where the interior used to be. One of the two old elm trees that had shaded the yard for a hundred years had burned down to a black stump. The other still stood but the leaves were gone and the bark had split.
Yellow caution tape ran the perimeter. A chain-link construction fence had been put up at some point, and someone had attached a weathered county notice to it. Then it was behind us.
Jack turned onto Seymour Court and slowed.
I knew the house the moment I saw the fence.
I’d driven past it my whole life. You couldn’t live in Bloody Mary and not know the Greek Revival on Seymour Court—a white three-story with six columns across the front portico and a roofline with a full-width pediment. Every window had black shutters, and the covered front porch ran the full width of the house. The whole thing sat back from the road on what had to be fifteen or twenty acres, and the property was lined with a white painted wood fence that ran as far as I could see in both directions. Mature trees lined the fence and extended beyond it, and somewhere back in the tree line you could make out the shapes of outbuildings.
The house had been in the Aldrich family since the 1840s until the last of them—an elderly widow named Frances—died without heirs three years ago and left the estate to the historical preservation society that didn’t have the funds to maintain it and couldn’t agree on what to do with it. It had been tied up in legal proceedings ever since, sitting empty while lawyers billed hours and the grass grew long and the paint on the shutters started to peel at the corners.
Jack pulled into the driveway and stopped at the gate.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “What am I thinking about?”
“The funeral home,” he said. “I think it’d be the perfect place to relocate.”
“This is millions of dollars,” I said. “We would never make that back from a funeral home.”
“I know,” he said.
“So?”
“So I’ve been thinking about that.” He looked out the window for a moment. “This property could support a lot more than a funeral home. You’ve got the acreage for a chapel and a proper reception hall, which means you’re not just offering preparation—you’re doing the full service and the gathering afterward. We could offer weddings as well. That’s a different revenue model. And if you build cabins back in the trees, you’ve got somewhere for families to stay, wedding parties to book, overnight guests. There’s nothing like it anywhere in the state of Virginia.”
I looked at the fence line. “Weddings and funerals.” I felt dread in my gut. “I’m not a wedding planner.”
