Free Mortar and Murder by Jennie Bentley

she’s not from Waterfield, so she doesn’t have a network of acquaintances already built up that can refer her business.”
    “Melissa isn’t from Waterfield, either,” I pointed out. Delaware or West Virginia or some such place, if I remembered correctly. Not the same as the Ukraine, but still, not a native Mainer.
    “There have been Ellises in Waterfield for generations,” Derek said, unconsciously arrogant. “The moment she was introduced as my wife, and as Dad’s daughter-in-law, she belonged.”
    Figures. “Did she use your name? Or did she always keep her own?”
    “She used mine,” Derek said. “And went back to her own after the divorce.” He paused, perhaps to wonder how we had gotten onto this subject.
    “Anyway,” I switched back to where we’d been before, “Irina asked me to go with her tomorrow. I couldn’t really say no.”
    “So much for not getting involved this time,” Derek said.
    “I know. I was telling myself this morning that here’s finally a dead body I have no connection to, and now look what’s happened.”
    “Murphy’s Law,” Derek said. “Or something like it. OK. I’ll go to the island without you in the morning, and if what you’re doing doesn’t take all day and you want to come out later, you can take the ferry.”
    “I’ll wear comfy shoes for the walk across the island,” I said. “And I can’t imagine a trip to the morgue can take all day. I’ll probably see you in the afternoon.”
    “I’ll look forward to that,” Derek said gallantly and hung up.

    Irina and I got to the morgue just before ten the next morning. I was wearing my usual uniform of jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt; clothes I didn’t mind ruining with paint, polyurethane, or power tools later on. Irina was wearing her usual uniform of staid business suit with starched blouse and high heels. Today’s suit was black, and the blouse was gray; I wondered if she had dressed for the occasion or if it was just the outfit that was in the front of the closet this morning.
    The choice of black clothing may or may not have been deliberate, but I couldn’t see any signs of mourning on her face. She looked as she always did: composed and distant. Her eyes weren’t red rimmed from crying, and she looked like she’d spent a perfectly pleasant night. If she had recognized the young woman in the picture, she wasn’t someone Irina knew well. I thought I detected a sign of nerves when I turned the Beetle off outside the Portland City Morgue, though. When I opened the door and swung my legs out—for the occasion, I had replaced the pink lipstick boots with a pair of comfy, fur-lined clogs—Irina didn’t follow suit. When I turned to look at her, she was staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on nothing and her face pale. I nudged her.
    “It’s OK. She doesn’t look bad.” At least the corpse hadn’t looked bad yesterday, when we fished her from the water. Now that the medical examiner had had a go that might have changed. But I thought he would be sensitive to what was a potential relative or acquaintance and make sure the body was presentable. I wasn’t too sanguine about going into the morgue myself. I’d seen corpses before—more than my fair share—but I’d never been to the morgue, and I would have been happy to keep it that way.
    I coaxed Irina out of the car and into the building. Wayne was waiting for us in the lobby and took us downstairs to the cold storage. He did give me the option of staying behind, but Irina looked like she was ready to bolt, and when I hesitated, wondering if maybe I could get away with waiting upstairs, she sent me such a desperate look that I couldn’t in good conscience abandon her. So we all headed down to the basement in the elevator.
    The first thing that struck me was the odor. That sickly sweet smell of death, not quite masked by the air fresheners and air-filtration system. For a few days last summer I hadn’t been able to get it out of my