Carmen stepped out of her tiny black hatchback and into the somewhat moist autumn air with a huff. The huff turned into a groan when she closed her car door on her coattail and nearly tripped while walking away. She scrambled to free herself, thankful that it was too dark for anyone to see her blunder even with the fancy streetlights, and fixed her mussed curls as she walked up the steps of the Kingfisher Funeral Home. It was breezy, chilly, and smelled like wet earth—all common things for a harbor town in the fall, she supposed. It was quiet aside from the pub down the way, it was one of the few buildings that still had its lights on. Autumn felt different on the east coast, and the Lovecraft vibes the tiny town of Aspen Harbor had at night both excited and concerned her.

She fished inside of her oversized pockets for the keys, and nearly yelped when the large door opened unexpectedly.

“C’mon, Mr. Kingfisher, you can’t keep being creepy like that!” Carmen whined.

“It comes with the territory,” Lionel replied with a smirk. “You were also taking too long.”

He stepped out of the way to let her inside. He was much taller than her five-foot-three build but lanky and long-limbed. His typically meticulously styled salt and pepper hair was falling over his silver-blue eyes. It was obvious that he, too, had gone home at the end of the day and prepared to enjoy a weekend that was interrupted, judging by his casual appearance. He was in a henley and jeans, much more laid back than his usual button up and slacks combo, and he looked tired. His bandaged hand trembled at his side.

“Pizza?” Carmen asked as she shimmied out of her coat.

“In the break room, I figured we can talk about the situation while we eat. I had just put my leftover lasagna in the microwave when I got the call. It is still in there, probably making the kitchen reek of marinara” Lionel replied as he closed and locked the door.

“I was standing in front of my fridge like a zombie when you called me.”

“Then I suppose we’re both overdue for a meal. Thankfully the… body isn’t in bad shape so it won’t be a gross conversation.”

“This whole thing sounds weird.”

“It is.”

The funeral home staff walked down the short hall to the break room, bypassing wooden tables with brochures and sample urns as they went. The rug under their feet had been recently vacuumed, and Carmen noticed that some flowers had been set on the table in the foyer from a funeral a few days prior, most likely left behind by the family. Lionel had been on a cleaning spree all week, so it didn’t surprise her that he’d continued to work even after she’d left a few hours earlier.

Carmen could smell the warm pizza and happily skipped inside of the crowded little room that was full of event necessities Lionel had yet to find places for while reorganizing the closets. Two pizza boxes sat on the small table with a stack of paper plates, a file folder was tucked up near a water bottle that was half-drunk. She popped open the fridge and grabbed a cola before serving herself a few slices of the supreme pie.

Lionel sat and made himself a plate, too. He flipped open the file. “We’re dealing with a sort of local celebrity, which is why this is so important. In a town as small as Aspen Harbor, anyone with a modicum of popularity is a household name even if one doesn’t wish to be. His name was Lincoln Crane, Link to his friends. Thirty-two years old, he was a horror writer with a new book coming out on Tuesday, and he just sent the completed manuscript for the third book in the trilogy to his editor yesterday morning. He was supposed to make an appearance at that indie bookstore, The Quirky Quill, in the city tomorrow morning. His agent—who called in the body—couldn’t get a hold of him. She’d flown in earlier this morning… yesterday morning, I suppose is more correct at this hour, to talk details about the event, but when he didn’t answer his phone Lucy assumed he was asleep. Link was a notorious night owl. By the time dinner rolled around and he still hadn’t called, she went to check on him, and now we’re here.”

“Weird, and I’m guessing there’s no sign of forced entry?” Carmen asked as she fanned the smoke away from her pizza slice. The oils had already started to warp the paper plate underneath the overstuffed triangle.

“No, that’s the curious thing. No forced entry, almost all of the windows and doors were closed and locked. Lucy did say that the front door wasn’t closed entirely but the lock was partially engaged and his keys were on the decorative hook, so it may have been that he’d forgotten to push the door in fully or was distracted and thought he’d locked it and moved on. He was found in his office slumped over on his desk, his laptop was still on, so the obvious route to go down is natural causes. No external wounds to be seen at a cursory glance, either.”

“So… why is this an emergency? Other than the whole appearance tomorrow being cancelled and the inevitable PR nightmare.”

“No one believes it’s natural. Not his mother, not his agent, even Detective Goode finds it peculiar. I must say I concur. Something about it feels… off.”

Carmen looked at him with furrowed brows and an accusatory flare as she bit into her pizza with an exaggerated motion. Lionel rubbed his injured hand nervously. The older man seemed uneasy.

“What’s the deal?” Carmen asked through the pepperoni slice hanging from her teeth as she tucked her leg up under her. She started trying to fix her chaotic curls.

“Please don’t talk with your mouth full,” Lionel chided.

“Just because you’re old enough to be my dad doesn’t mean you are, and just because you’re nervous doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get out of telling me why you’re being weird. Weirder than normal, anyway.”

“Link and I may or may not have had a relations—”

“Ewwww!”

“A relationship, you wee weirdo!”

“Oh.”

“That’s why you should let people finish answering your questions. You would fail miserably at a game show. Link and I were testing the waters, so we’d only been on a handful of dates. And by a handful I mean quite a few… we were seeing each other, but it wasn’t official, as the kids say. No labels yet.”

“That’s quite an age gap, isn’t it? Not that I care, I literally consumed copious amounts of paranormal romance where the average age gap is like a hundred,” Carmen said with a laugh.

“It was only ten years, it’s not my fault I’m greying already. Nonetheless, this does concern me on a personal level, too. I find it odd. He quite literally told me a few weeks ago that he’d recently had a physical and was completely healthy. He made it a point to let me know—”

“Like a… ‘please believe me’ kind of point?”

Lionel set his pizza slice down. “I… suppose?”

Carmen looked at him for a moment. “Like… an ‘I need someone to verify that I’m okay in case something happens’ kind of point?”

Lionel swallowed hard. “Aye, I had that thought, too. It did seem unusual but I assumed he was simply weirded out by the fact I’m a funeral director. People get antsy when the topic of the end comes up in conversations. Thinking back on it, though, I could see it as a precautionary thing. A way for someone to know that he was well. That also doesn’t mean freak accidents can’t happen, but I am suspicious. You watch too many crime documentaries to go down that route so fast.”

“And that’s why you called me in, don’t act like it isn’t.”

“I needed an unbiased individual with two working hands, don’t flatter yourself, lassie.”

Carmen smiled. “So, it’s a ‘need to verify if something is amiss so we can get it figured out as soon as possible’ kind of emergency, but it’s also a ‘my boyfriend just died unexpectedly and I need a friend’ kind of emergency?”

Lionel nodded weakly. “N-not boyfriend, simply a lad I fancied. I am heartbroken it only went so far, I did quite like him and I am shaken up. So I’d like to make sure we’re thorough since Link deserves it, which I can’t do like this—both emotionally and physically,” he said as he waved his hand around.

The bandaged limb seemed somewhat floppy, and it was concerning to both of the morticians at the table. The shaking fingers could hardly grip the slice of pizza for more than a few seconds. Carmen hated that he was being so secretive about the wound, but she’d come to learn that Lionel Kingfisher was a secretive man. He had a big heart, a warm smile, and a welcoming aura, but he struggled to let people in. She’d only been working there for a few months, but she could read him like an open book. He didn’t like getting close to people because he knew he would inevitably lose them. It came with the territory of the job, and it had obviously taken a toll on him.

“We’ll get it taken care of. Sorry, this has to be hard. Even being in this line of work it doesn’t make it it any easier when it becomes personal,” Carmen said quietly.

“Which is why I’m glad you’re here, Carmen. I know this isn’t quite the job you wanted, the drive is a pain from what you said and it was an unusual process getting here, not to mention the cross-country move, but I truly do appreciate you. No one wanted to come work for weird old Kingfisher out by the pier, it was a wee bit lonely until you showed up.”

Carmen smiled. “I like weird old Kingfisher, even if he really does need to bring his computer software into the modern age.”

Lionel laughed. “I’ll consider it. Let’s hurry so we can get this over with, I’d like to go home and wrestle with my emotions over a wine cooler and a nap.”

Carmen’s smile faded. She nodded and continued eating.

They finished their pizza slices in silence, then slid the boxes into the fridge, knowing they’d either get hungry once they were finished or would eat it for leftovers over their coming shifts. With nothing else left to do to prepare for the task, they headed to the morgue.

Once they got their protective gear on, Lionel set the file folder to the side and approached the body cooler against the far wall. He opened up a door with a handwritten label that said Crane, L. with a slow sigh. Carmen approached and helped him pull the tray out. With extra care, they moved the body of the writer onto the autopsy table, and Carmen pulled sheet off of his head. She didn’t quite know what to say, but she saw Lionel tense and turn away so she felt as if she needed to say something.

“Do you want to take notes and walk me through it from… over there?” Carmen asked with a limp wave to the other side of the room.

“I think that may be wise,” Lionel said quietly as he moved his gaze back down to the raven-haired writer. 

Lincoln Crane had angular features, a long nose with a rounded bridge, small ears with several piercings, and she could somewhat discern that his eyes had been a rich brown before death. His face was clean shaven, his hair was done in a well-kept wolf cut with a middle part—very Kpop of him—and it still looked good despite the whole being dead thing. A faint haunting of cologne hung on his skin, as if he had planned on going somewhere. Planned on attending that book event in the morning.

“Had you heard from him?” Carmen asked.

“We exchanged our usual texts, he often slept in so I’d get a good morning text around my lunch break. We’d made plans for dinner tomorrow—uh, today—after he got back from his event, to celebrate,” Lionel replied.

“So it doesn’t sound like he… planned on dying, either,” Carmen said delicately.

“No.”

“Shouldn’t the cops be handling this?” Carmen inquired after a beat of hesitation.

“Not in a wee town like this. They would have to transport the victims off to the nearest hospital, and I couldn’t let that happen. Gideon Goode is an excellent sheriff, one of the few cops I trust, and he trusts me so I offered to handle it when he called to ask if I could. And I can, I’ve done several crime cases like this in my many years here so I’m uniquely qualified. I’d rather know it was done correctly, even if it hurts.”

“And it’s not a conflict of interest?”

Lionel cocked a thick eyebrow up. “Not if the relationship is a secret.”

Carmen nodded in understanding. She started running through the list of tasks that Lionel explained step by step from the comfort of a stool where he sat jotting down notes, every so often lifting his silver-blue eyes up to check her work. She was a decent mortician, thorough and educated, but she hadn’t been given much hands-on experience. The places she’d applied to after her internship at the Bloodworth Family Funeral home in New Orleans concluded preferred a reaper who could actually function like a proper reaper. She’d been turned away by four parlors before Lionel offered her the job, and though he didn’t know she was a reaper, and she didn’t work in a supernatural haven like everyone in her family had wanted her to, she was fine with how things turned out. Especially now. Lionel looked so sad, and the thought of him having to do this on his own broke her heart.

She ran through the list of initial to-dos and moved onto a more detailed check to see if they could garner any information on what caused the untimely death of Lincoln Crane. She gently set her hands on the writer’s cheeks and popped his mouth open. She flicked her eyes to Lionel, who noticed and stood with concern. He leaned over the body of his not-quite-boyfriend and peered into his mouth. He, too, shifted his gaze up to Carmen with a curious eyebrow raised. Though he had a mask over his face, Carmen could tell her employer’s lips had parted in question and shock.

Lionel dropped the file onto the floor and whipped around to try and find a pair of tweezers. “Is that what I think it is?”

“A piece of paper, yes,” Carmen confirmed with a nod.

Lionel returned. He set a soft hand under the writer’s chin and held his skull steady, his wounded limb shook with worry. He carefully removed the folded piece of paper and held it up to the bright overhead lights. A symbol neither of them recognized was drawn onto the small yellow paper. The morticians looked at each other with worry. This truly had become a mystery.