Coop Knows the Scoop Page 15

  “Sure,” muttered Justice. “If I spell something, I’m an idiot, but Beau rearranges a few letters and everyone thinks he’s a genius.”

  Beau leaned in Justice’s face. “Check my IQ scores. I am a genius.”

  Chapter 28

  The sun had long since dipped below the horizon when Justice, Liberty, Beau, and I gathered in the living room for Operation Walking Dead.

  “Please, Mama,” I begged.

  “We just want to walk around the square.” Liberty clasped her hands and pleaded.

  Justice nodded. “And we’ll take flashlights just to be extra safe.”

  “The fresh air would be nice after seeing Dad,” said Beau. “Hospitals smell kinda funny.”

  “Oh, Beau.” Mama reached and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I understand.” She looked to Gramps. “What do you think, Harley?”

  Gramps folded down his paper from where he sat reading it in his recliner. “For the love of Pete, Delilah, the four of them are actually getting along. Let them go. What kind of trouble do you think they’re going to get into?”

  “Thanks, Gramps!”

  “No more than an hour, you hear?” called Mama.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gramps muttered something unintelligible and turned his focus back to his newspaper.

  * * *

  The closest I’d ever come to breaking the law was helping myself to the occasional cookie from the jar Mama kept hidden behind the pickled okra. Breaking into Earl’s funeral parlor after sundown was definitely a step up.

  We ducked into the empty back alley of Comforted Souls and gathered behind the rusted dumpster.

  “Do you think he has a burglar alarm?” I asked.

  “Doubt it,” said Liberty. “What’s a person to steal? A body?”

  Beau shook his head. “He doesn’t have one.”

  All three of us stared at him. I was better off not knowing too much about Beau’s techniques. I glanced at my watch. Mama had given us only an hour. “We’re running out of time.”

  Beau poked his head around the side of the dumpster and shined his flashlight on the back door of the funeral parlor. “See the small window high in the wall to the left of the door? I think I can squeeze through.”

  “How you going to reach it?” I asked.

  He shined his flashlight in my eyes. “You’re going to give me a leg up, moron.”

  “Then what?” asked Justice.

  Lib rolled her eyes. “He’ll crawl through, unlock the back door, and let us in.”

  Beau peeked around the dumpster once more and then to Liberty and Justice. “Hey—Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber—go make sure no one’s coming at either end of the street. Don’t use a flashlight unless you have to. It draws attention. We’ll wait here until y’all get back.”

  Liberty looked like she wanted to pick Beau up and toss him in the dumpster.

  I looked at my watch again. “Hurry.”

  She and Justice scurried off in opposite directions.

  Something had been poking at my brain ever since Beau butted into our conversation at the café that morning.

  “Why are you helping, Beau?”

  He jammed his hands into his pockets. “What else am I going to do on a Friday night with you losers?”

  Then, as if he’d read my mind, he said, “And don’t go figuring we’re friends. ’Cause we’re not.”

  Fair enough.

  Liberty dashed behind the dumpster, and Justice followed a few moments later.

  “We clear?” asked Beau.

  “Yep,” said Justice.

  Liberty nodded. “Good to go.”

  “Follow me.” Beau hurried to the back door of Comforted Souls. A dim light hung above the gray metal door. Beau pointed to Justice and then up to the light. “You’re the tallest. Unscrew the bulb.”

  Beau used the hand railing near the door as a ladder. A moment later, we stood in darkness.

  Beau faced me. “Okay, give me a leg up.”

  I crouched down and interlaced my fingers to create a stirrup. Beau placed a foot into my hands and reached for the window ledge.

  He looked down. “Get me higher.”

  I slowly stood. My shoulders strained under his weight. “Sheesh, man, how many slices of pizza did you eat tonight?”

  “Six. Why?”

  I groaned as gravel from his shoes bit into my palm. “No reason.”

  “Almost there,” Beau rasped.

  And then suddenly the weight was gone. I looked up to see him slip through the window.

  Lib fiddled with her ponytail. “Got to hand it to him. Who eats six slices of pizza and still manages to squirm through a small window?”

  The back door clicked open and Beau’s face appeared. “Quick.”

  We flipped our flashlights on and scanned the area around us.

  “Whoa,” Liberty breathed. “Coffin central.”

  “It can’t get any creepier than this.” Justice’s voice came from behind me.

  Rows of crookedly stacked coffins lined the wall closest to us. More coffins rested on the other side of the wall too. Some were closed, others opened. Different styles, wood colors, and fabrics.

  Justice came and stood next to me. “Do you think there’s people inside the shut ones?”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  “I’m gonna check.”

  “No! No time. And besides, that’s disrespectful.”

  “Dude,” Justice said. “We just broke into a funeral home. We passed disrespectful miles back.” He rubbed his hand over the top of one. “Can’t believe Earl got stuck in one of these things when he was a kid. That’ll make anyone closetphobic.”

  “Claustrophobic,” corrected Liberty.

  “It’s a storage area, I think.” Beau shined his light across the coffins toward a hallway partially covered by a black velvet curtain. “That hall probably leads out front to the showroom. Maybe there’s an office or something too.”

  “Are those urns?” Liberty elbowed me and shined her light on a shelf behind me holding several vases with lids.

  “I think so.” I shuddered. The idea someone’s ashes could be sitting in them waiting for a family member to pick them up gave me chills.

  Another doorway leading to a different room was on my left. I took a couple steps and looked inside, running my flashlight around the room. It sort of looked like a doctor’s office, only bigger and weirder. A stainless steel table with a sink at one end stood in the middle. Shelves on the wall held different-sized bottles of colored fluids. A large red bin, with the word BIOWASTE stamped on the side, rested in the corner.

  And the whole place smelled like our classroom last year when we dissected bullfrogs.

  “It just got creepier,” I said.

  Liberty walked in and gasped. “The embalming room.” She pointed her flashlight to a machine on the counter. It looked like a large watercooler only with hoses and tubes attached to the sides. “That’s the thing that injects the embalming fluid into the bodies.”

  Beau focused on the machine. Even though we stood in near dark, I could tell his face had turned a kind of pasty gray. I wondered if the tubes coming from it reminded him of his daddy’s hospital room. But we couldn’t dwell. We needed to get moving.

  “Let’s split up and search,” I said. “Beau and I’ll take up front, and, Jus, you and Lib take this place and the storeroom. And hurry. If we get caught, we’re dead meat.”

  Justice grinned. “Then we’re in the perfect place.”

  Liberty slugged him in the arm.

  Beau kept staring at the machine. I pulled on his shirtsleeve. “Don’t think about it, man. Come on.”

  We maneuvered our way through the maze of coffins. The clock on the wall ticked away the minutes in the otherwise sile
nt room.

  When we got to the velvet curtain, I pushed it aside and shined my flashlight down the hall. “You were right. The showroom is in front and”—I turned toward a door on my right—“this must be Earl’s office. What a hoarder.”

  It was a small room, made even smaller by the ugly, oversized, floor-to-ceiling metal shelves covering the walls. Each one overflowed with all kinds of junk.

  Beau turned in a circle, shining his light on the shelves. “There’s more garbage here than what was in the Feather sisters’ attic.”

  “Yeah. I just hope there’s no ventriloquist doll hidden in all this stuff.”

  After several minutes of hunching over and searching, Beau stood and stretched. “Earl is one strange dude.” He pointed to the shelf. “Look at this mess. He’s got his business papers tossed in with these funky little Greek statues. Here’re more urns—kinda disturbing having them in the same box as the salt and pepper shakers. Why do people collect salt and pepper shakers anyway? Same with little spoons or those thimble things. I don’t get it.”

  “Beats me.” I dug through a cardboard box on the bottom. Couldn’t help but wonder if he was rambling ’cause maybe he was feeling nervous. I bet being at a funeral home while his daddy wasn’t doing so hot at the hospital freaked him out. Truthfully, it freaked me out a bit too. Being surrounded by so many tools of death made me feel heavy and cold on the inside. Had Dad been in a place like this before his funeral? I hoped not.

  Disheveled papers escaping from folders were stashed in old shoeboxes already filled with books, knickknacks, and really ugly garage-sale bargains. Mama would’ve loved it. Garage sales were her favorite.

  “Do you think any of this stuff was stolen off dead people?”

  Beau picked up a plate. “Unless someone croaked with this full set of china hidden in their pockets, I doubt it.”

  “Well, there’s nothing on my end.” I glanced at my watch again. “We’re almost out of time.”

  “Hey!” Beau pointed the beam of light to the top shelf. “Is that it?”

  I took a couple steps back to look. “Nah. That’s an old cash register.”

  “No, next to the cash register but behind that small Chinese gong.”

  “Hold on.” I grabbed Earl’s chair from behind his desk and rolled it to the shelf, then climbed up. “Hold the chair.” I stood on my toes, shined my flashlight toward the back, and craned my neck. “Yes!” I whisper-shouted. “You found it!” I moved the gong aside and held my flashlight with my teeth. I lifted the typewriter. It was heavier than I thought it would be. “Oh man,” I garbled through my flashlight.

  “Grow a muscle and hand it down,” said Beau.

  My arms strained as I lifted it over a mound of clutter on the shelf.

  “Achoo!”

  Beau’s arms jerked with his sneeze. The chair jolted. My flashlight flew out of my mouth. I crashed into the giant shelf as the weight of the typewriter threw me off balance. I somewhat jumped but mostly fell to the floor…along with what felt like half the junk on the shelves. An avalanche of papers, books, and everything else crashed to the floor.

  “Smooth move.” Beau wrenched the typewriter from my gripping fingers and set it on Earl’s cluttered desk. “Justice. Liberty,” he called. “I found it.”

  “We heard,” said Liberty, appearing in the doorway. “Along with the rest of the town.” She began to pick up the items from the floor. “Give me a hand, Jus.”

  I picked myself off the floor and pulled a folded sheet of paper from my back pocket I’d shoved in earlier. “I’ll type a sentence. Hold your flashlight higher so I can see what I’m doing.”

  I tried to feed the paper through the roller, but my hands shook. My ribs struggled to contain the pounding of my heart. I stepped back, took a deep breath, and tried again.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, pressing down the keys.

  “Well?” Lib whispered.

  I leaned over to examine the paper. “Nothing. As in there’s nothing here. The ribbon must be dried out.”

  Not fair. All the sneaking and searching and we had zilch to show for it. We all stared at it. I don’t know why. Maybe we hoped it would suddenly start working.

  “Sorry, dude.” Justice squeezed my shoulder. “You could still ask Tick to test it…maybe?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.” I ran my hands through my hair and looked around. “Earl can’t know we were here. We need to get this back where it was.” I climbed back on the chair. “Hand it up to me.”

  I grabbed the typewriter from Justice while Beau held the flashlight toward the shelves. But what I saw in the beam of light almost made me drop it again.

  “Hold on a minute, Justice. Take this back. Beau, keep your light there.”

  My breath caught in my throat. When I fell against the shelf I must’ve jostled some junk loose, because what I saw now wasn’t there before. Mixed in with dust-covered teacups and dented cardboard boxes was a suitcase.

  “Holy crap,” I reached for the handle.

  “What is that?” asked Beau.

  I jumped off the chair. “Tabby’s suitcase.” I swallowed. Words didn’t want to form. “I recognize it from the photos.”

  “You sure?” asked Liberty.

  “Positive. It has her initials.” I set it on top of the scattered papers on Earl’s desk and flicked the metal latches open.

  A handful of dresses and couple pairs of shoes. That was it. Gran’s favorite orange-and-white striped dress by that designer dude wasn’t there, though. If the dress wasn’t here, and wasn’t in the attic with the rest of her things…then where was it?

  Liberty swore. “He must have killed your grandma and then faked everything to make it look like she ran off.”

  “There’s the proof you wanted, Coop,” said Justice.

  “And took her necklace,” said Beau. “I still think Earl and Lear are the same guy.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. We were standing in the office of a murderer. What other explanation was there? It would be an open-and-shut case—as the cops on TV would say.

  Justice shook his head in disgust. “For a guy who buries people for a living, you’d think he’d have known to dig the hole a little deeper.”

  Beau shrugged. “Maybe Earl was in a hurry. People don’t think straight when they’re rushed.”

  “We got to put all this back and call Deputy Gomez,” I said.

  “Why not Vidler? He’s nicer,” said Liberty.

  “Tick isn’t on the case anymore,” I reminded her. “It doesn’t matter the typewriter was a total bust. When we show this suitcase to Gomez, he’ll arrest Earl—once they find him.” I glanced at the wall clock. “We’ve got to hurry. We’re out of time.”

  Liberty checked her watch. “Let’s hope Deputy Gomez will listen to us and come quickly.”

  Her words got me thinking. What if Deputy Gomez didn’t come to Earl’s right away? Tick probably would’ve, but I didn’t know Gomez well. Liberty had a point. Maybe it wasn’t smart to leave the suitcase behind.

  “Good point.” I grabbed it. “We’ll show Deputy Gomez and tell him where we found it. Put everything else back. Earl can’t know we’ve been here.”

  With all the junk that had fallen from the shelves, it took us longer than I’d hoped to clean up.

  “Now let’s get out of here,” I said.

  I couldn’t wait to get home. We had real evidence against Earl, and I could prove Gramps hadn’t killed Tabby. I yanked open the back door.

  The police car searchlight pointed right at our faces.

  Chapter 29

  “I’ve called your parents, and they should be here soon.” Tick stared at us as we stood with our backs against his police car. He held Tabby’s suitcase in his hand.

  Several yards away, Earl stood at the back door, speaking with Deputy
Gomez. A dingy gray bathrobe hung on his thin frame. His striped pajama bottoms almost covered up the fact he wore slippers.

  Tick’s eyes met mine. They seemed heavy, but not from lack of sleep. “What were you thinking?” He didn’t wait for answer. He placed the suitcase on his car trunk and walked away.

  I hadn’t expected his words to hurt…but they did.

  At least Tick hadn’t cuffed us, and I knew once Mama arrived I’d be grounded (again), impounded, imprisoned, plus any other punishment that was considered legal, or possibly even illegal.

  “How was I to know Earl’d come back?” I muttered. “And from visiting his mom of all things. He wasn’t even on the run.” I kicked the gravel.

  Beau snorted. “If somebody hadn’t fallen, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  I groaned. “If somebody hadn’t sneezed, I wouldn’t have fallen.”

  He squared his shoulders. “You think I did it on purpose? Even if I did, what are you going to do about it? Huh?” He pushed my shoulder.

  I curled my fist. “How about a quick repeat of what happened in the library?”

  Lib pulled me back, and Jus stepped in front of Beau.

  “Coop!” Liberty said. “Beau didn’t sneeze on purpose, and you know it.”

  Tick spun around. We all leaned back against the police car and examined our shoelaces.

  “You’ve spent your whole life hating my Gramps.” I forced the words out from my clenched jaw. “Why did you come anyway?”

  Beau glared. “Because I owe your gramps one. And I don’t like owing nobody, so I thought I’d pay up.”

  “You owe…? What are you talking about?”

  “How stupid are you? Your gramps saved my dad’s life. So, duh, I owe your gramps.” Beau took a deep breath. “And I wanted to help.”

  I met his stare, expecting to see the same anger in his eyes that I held in mine. But there was no anger. Just sincerity.

  “I wish you two would make up your minds,” muttered Liberty.

  “Cooper Steven Goodman!” Mama’s voice could’ve rearranged the night stars from where she stood next to her car in the alley. I felt all four of us try to shrink.