Once it was established who TJ was running from and where she was running to, there were many other questions to be answered. The problem was, I didn’t want to write a novel. I had just left my job and opened my own business. There was soon to be a Great Dane puppy arriving, and house hunting…and life. A novel was a commitment.
But TJ would not remain silent. And then Colby showed up. If I were to get any peace, the road ahead for them had to be written.
TWO
Running out of money weeks after my life came crashing down around me and unable to convince Peter, my Soon-To-Be Ex, to sign our divorce papers – a divorce he had asked for I might add – I took the only job I could find in a bad economy with a Master’s in art history and museum studies. I became the marketing director for Butterfield Funeral Homes. Making it clear to my lascivious boss that as soon as my divorce was final, I’d be leaving. Heading as far away from the Midwest as humanly possible and getting a job in the biggest museum I could find, preferably within driving distance of an ocean. It was win-win. They needed someone cheap and temporary, I needed the money.
I had other plans, so many other plans. When Peter and I first moved to Peoria for his new job almost ten months ago, we bought a cute little bungalow in less than ideal condition. It was all we could afford and I had meticulously renovated and restored it over the first six months. I had hoped to turn our showplace into a walking advertisement for my small business idea as a project manager for other homeowners. There were a plethora of rundown bungalows and Victorian homes all over Peoria that needed tender loving care. That idea went up in the same blaze as my marriage. So now I was renovating the reputation of the local funeral home empire instead.
Butterfield had recently acquired the second largest funeral home in a three funeral home town, Suggs-Haney. This now made them the largest funeral home in Peoria and earned them the ire of many in the community. They were seen as predatory, greedy and suspect. My job was to put a compassionate, community-centered face on things. That proved to be more difficult than it sounded. Butterfield was now in the hands of Nick Butterfield, the son of Alton Butterfield, Jr. (semi-retired) and grandson of Alton Butterfield, Sr. (deceased) who founded the Butterfield conglomerate.
Nick does not have the family passion for the dead nor the family work ethic. He has dreams of being a musician. Many nights he could be found in the basement of the old Victorian mansion that houses the business – smoking a fatty and rocking out on his Gibson guitar. Luckily, the overnight guests are dead. He’s also growing a small crop in the old carriage house at the back of the property. If that weren’t enough, he has a reputation for being handsy with the help and maybe a few grieving widows.
Yup, this was the guy I had to make compassionate and respectable. Good thing I liked a challenge.
“We interviewed quite a few people for this job, TJ, but you were definitely the hottest. It’ll be nice to have a pretty face here every morning,” he told me on my first day. “Coffee?”
“Did I mention in my interview I’m a first degree black belt?”
“You did. Think you can take me down?” he asked suggestively. To my credit, I did not slug him.
Two weeks into the job I knew I needed a raise when he told me I should wear my “skirts tighter and flirt with the old guys.” This was my penance for giving up painting.
That same day, I watched a beautiful, dark-haired man step out of a navy blue Hyundai. I was sitting in my office, a lovely windowed alcove off the main floor. It was an Impressionist dream. Full of light, the windows perfectly framed the grand porch that served as the front entrance. I had a splendid view as he walked up the front steps.
I took notice because ever since Soon-To-Be-Ex-Peter had cracked open the closet and decided to let some light in and announced, “Honey, I think I might be attracted to men, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love you,” and then asked for a divorce, I needed a beautiful man in my life. And here he was, walking through the big hundred-year-old double doors and into the foyer.
On my first day at Butterfield, I discovered that if I opened my door a crack, I could hear everything in the foyer, hallway and reception area. This came in handy on several occasions, as I was able to anticipate the next Nick-centered public relations crisis. I was about to open said door in order to eavesdrop when there was a knock on it. I leapt like a startled cat, took a deep breath to gather myself, and opened the door to Deep Blue Eyes smiling at me.
He was easily six two, filling the doorway as he asked to come in. He was no Michelangelo’s David, but then, who was? He was pretty fine on his own. He showed me his badge and I caught a glimpse of his big gun. I learned that Deep Blue Eyes was Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael Fraser. He was there to inquire about Mr. Arthur Shiedeger, a prominent member of the Peoria River Dogs minor league baseball management team. Mr. Shiedeger was currently in embalming room two, waiting for family instructions. The family was waiting on the report from the coroner. The coroner was waiting to meet with police. Seems Mr. Shiedeger was a victim of foul play.
The Marshals had Mr. Shiedeger under surveillance and were about to serve him with a felony fugitive warrant when he turned up dead. The rest of the River Dogs management team were under suspicion of racketeering, money laundering and interstate gambling. It appeared that while the River Dogs were suffering four straight years of financial losses, despite record attendance, some members of the management team were seeing record profits. The State Police had been investigating the possibility of fraud, gambling and embezzlement when Mr. Shiedeger decided to take a trip to Vegas.
While in Vegas, he met up with some not-so-nice people and engaged in alleged criminal activity. This alleged activity included expanding the sports gambling and money laundering from small-town Illinois to big-time Vegas. That’s when the Marshals had to get involved. That led Marshal Fraser on the hunt for Shiedeger’s killer and to my office looking for my help.
I was eager to help. He was sitting close and whatever he was wearing was intoxicating. I asked Marshal Fraser why in the world he would enlist my help, even while thinking I would be the best damn Girl Friday he had ever seen if he’d just keep smiling at me like that.
“Call me Mike,” he said with a smile. “Look, it’s unorthodox, I know, but I’ve done a little checking and you’re not from around here. My guess is you have no ties and no one to gossip to about what I’m going to ask you to do.”
“You’ve been checking up on me? Creepy.”
“My job, sometimes it’s creepy,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
I took a deep breath to calm my overzealous endocrine system and asked him what he needed me to do.
“Watch. Take notes. Let me know who is coming and going. Who looks in on Shiedeger. Be discreet.”
Okay, I was totally hooked on the idea of spying for the federal government. How insane is that? And, I got to report back to Deep Blue Eyes? Yup, this did not suck. We spent the next hour discussing the task ahead as I ignored the work piled on my desk.
I’ll admit it, this was exactly what I needed to shake things up in my life. Sure, I was sorry about Mr. Shiedeger lying naked in limbo on a cold steel table, but since I had no emotional connection to him or his family, it was relatively easy to push away any remorse to the dark recesses of my mind. Remorse would have a lot of company: denial, confusion, and self-doubt were currently visiting that section.
Mike had suggested we meet at a pizza parlor near his hotel that evening so I could debrief him. Oh, look at me, I’ll be doing a debriefing. Hot damn. I kept an eagle-eye out the rest of the day, but unfortunately, with the exception of the Widow Martin coming to collect her husband’s cremains, the day had been a dud. I discretely inquired about Mr. Shiedeger’s disposition and was told he was in limbo for the foreseeable future. He’d been transferred to a refrigeration unit. I managed to dig through his paperwork and found who was listed as his next of kin. I was surprised to see that instead of a spouse, it was his brother. Maybe this information would be helpful to my Beautiful Marshal, but I had my doubts. I was afraid on my first day of surveillance I was neither brilliant nor successful.
At home after work, I touched up my makeup and threw on what I hoped would be a cute-casual-pizza-bar look of jeans and a pink tee. I pulled on my favorite three-inch heeled Coachella boots. I finished up with a delicate pair of silver and pink dangle earrings, stepped back and took a long look in the full-length mirror on my closet door. I might be damaged goods but I could still pull off cute and fresh. At least I had that going for me. I grabbed my leather jacket and headed to the pizza parlor on Sheridan. Over pizza and a local brew, I filled Mike in on my day.
“Not much help I‘m afraid.”
“It’s early yet. And you’ve learned one of the first lessons of investigative work: tedium.”
I sighed heavily. Tedium was not what I was looking for.
“Why the big sigh?” he asked as he grabbed another slice.
“Honestly? I was looking for a little excitement to distract me from my disastrous personal life.”
“Careful,” he said with a smile, “you might get more excitement than you can handle.”
I almost choked on my beer. Hey, look at me I’m flirting. I might get through this divorce yet. Excitement indeed.
I didn’t know how much I would come to regret that desire.
“So,” Mike said as he poured more beer into my glass, “tell me about this disastrous personal life.”
I laughed, sipped my beer and did just that. I told him about lecherous Nick, Peter’s awakening, the nightmare of disentangling our finances for the impending divorce and my hopes for the future. It was nice to have someone to talk with, not realizing how lonely I had become after moving out of the bungalow and into my own apartment.
By day three, I was beginning to think we were going to have to flash freeze Mr. Shiedeger since no one, and I mean no one, wanted to take responsibility for his remains. The police had officially released his body to the family, but repeated calls to his brother went unanswered. Mike postulated that everyone wanted to lay low until they were sure they wouldn’t be implicated in his criminal activity. Mike had a deep reserve of patience, and not only in his work.
Despite multiple evenings of heavy flirtation, there were no multiple orgasms. Other than occasionally brushing the curls away from my face, he kept his distance. I assumed work came first, and I was fine with that. In reality, playing Undercover Girl was more enticing than being under-the-covers-girl. My life was complicated enough. Besides, maybe he had a wife and five little Mikes waiting for him in a tidy house with a tidy yard. I never got the chance to ask him.
After days of inaction, one afternoon there was suddenly a flurry of activity. Mr. Shiedeger was to be cremated and a memorial service held for him on Saturday. Since word of his criminal activities had leaked and was all anyone talked about, not to mention he was a prominent and now infamous member of the River Dogs, the service was going to be packed. Nothing brings out the bereaved like a good scandal. It would be all hands on deck. Nick asked me to work the service, to be on tissue box duty. No problem, I doubted there would be a big demand.
“Do you think it will be dangerous, at the funeral I mean?” I asked Mike as he gave me instructions the Friday night before the service. We sat in my dining room, sipping wine, tackling the logistics while eating dinner. When things had started to heat up with the funeral, we began having dinner at my place for maximum privacy as we discussed the details. That night, Mike had brought over Lebanese take-out from Khoury’s. I provided the wine.
“If I thought there would be any chance of that, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near it. Not even to hand out tissues,” he replied protectively, his face serious. “You’ll be people watching and I’ll be half a block away in the van, taking notes.” He lifted his wine glass and took a sip before continuing, “Another day of tedium, I’m afraid.” He smiled at the joke and then began to lay out the plans. I suppressed a sigh.
He gave me a nifty pin camera that doubled as a pretty brooch. With it, he could see everything that was going on around me. My next fun gadget was an earpiece. He would be able to direct me on where he needed to look. He could even whisper questions he might want me to ask someone. I was feeling all Mission: Impossible. I thoroughly expected to hear theme music and see Mike slide across the hood of his Hyundai.
I asked him if there would be other officers with him in the van. By this time, I knew he worked closely with the State Police. Federal Marshals have a broad, but limited scope of duties he told me over hot wings and tequila one night.
“U.S. Marshals are sworn to protect the courts, transport prisoners, protect witnesses, seize assets and chase down fugitives from the law,” he instructed me, “but we don’t have local jurisdiction.” Marshals are an elite group of about four thousand agents, he continued, chosen to serve and protect the country on a federal level. And, while it was a dangerous job that kept Marshals in risky situations, only two hundred Marshals had ever died in the line of duty since its inception. That was in 1789.
Mr. Shiedeger might have been a fugitive, but he was also an asset. The State Police were hoping he could lead them to the core of the illegal gambling operations in Peoria. This complicated Mike’s job.
“The Marshals work directly with the Troopers,” he told me. “When it was all over Shiedeger was to be brought in. I’d hoped to be part of the team that seized all the financial assets of those involved.”
But then, Shiedeger turned up dead and everything was thrown into disarray. Mike and the State Troopers were struggling to put the pieces together and not lose the progress they’d made up to that point. They were all hoping something would turn up before Shiedeger, and their entire case, was turned to ash.
To keep the funeral surveillance discreet, Mike had said there wouldn’t be any other officers. He’d be the only one in the van and it would be parked out of sight. He’d anticipated an uneventful afternoon followed by burgers and beer. I wished he’d been right.
The Saturday of the memorial service turned out to be forty-eight hours long. When it was over, Mike was dead and I realized my life was also in danger.
The more I thought about what had happened since Mike had been shot, the more I began to suspect that the Scary Dudes who ran me off the road this morning were not the only ones I needed to be worried about. In the last two days, there had been three attempts on my life. Deputy U.S. Marshal Colby Jameson had been present at two. He saved my life both times. At least that’s how it had appeared.
I would have to agonize about all that later because right now, trapped inside this dark embalming room, I was determined to solve Mike’s murder. Remembering his pride as he told me about becoming a Marshal, of belonging to that elite group, I felt my chest tighten. I had to push those thoughts aside. They were not going to help me. Maybe later I’d have the luxury of grief.
If I was going to find anything I was going to have to turn on the lights so I could look for the keys to the personal effects locker. Going through Mike’s stuff was a long shot, but I was desperate. I wanted to be the one to find the flash drive, to be in possession of it, to turn it over to…to whom? Colby? The State Police? The truth was, someone tipped off the killers about everything – Shiedeger, Mike, me – and I hadn’t a clue whom to trust. I slammed my head back in frustration, making what sounded like a sonic boom as it connected with the hollow core door. “Damn it,” I cursed quietly. I had to stop reacting and start acting. “Be smart,” I told myself. The stress and the smell of formaldehyde were beginning to take a toll. Colby was a good man. He was not trying to set me up or kill me and I’m sure I was not being influenced by his stated desire to see me naked…again. Mostly sure.
I was leaning on the door, wishing it had a lock. I was trying to feel along the wall for the light switch, all while listening intently for signs of Scary Dudes or Jim – praying for Jim. Suddenly the doorknob turned and the door began to scrape open, meeting with 130 pounds of resistance, as I stood frozen in fear against it.
More to come…
TJ Wilde Trilogy available here.
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Annie DeMoranville 