Free Cold Dead Past by John Curtis

silence.  Jay picked up his fork and looked down at the plate, wondering how to save the situation.
    "Pecan?" he asked, smiling, and hoping that he could get this derailed evening back onto the tracks.  Meg didn’t bother to look up at him, just picked at her plate.
    "Yeah. From White’s."
    Well, at least she was still speaking to him.
    "I used to love their stuff when I was a kid.  I haven’t been able to find anything this good since I moved away."
    He cut off a big forkful covered with the whipped cream and chewed it slowly, hoping she’d speak.  She just continued sitting, sullen, shoveling the pie into her mouth.  Jay decided to take another tack. When he took his next bite of the pie, he made sure he lost a bit of the whipped cream on the tip of his nose as it headed for his mouth.
    "This is great, really.  The whole meal, Meg."
    She looked up and began to laugh. "You’ve got something on your nose," she said as she leaned across the table to wipe off the dab of whipped cream with her napkin.
    When she was in close, Jay grabbed her wrist gently and guided her hand to his nose.
    "I loved the meal," he said with a smile, "I guess I was just thinking about work and what happened in town today.  I’m sorry."
    He looked into her eyes and pulled her closer, bringing his lips to hers.  They separated for a moment and then came back together in a deep snog.  He was forgiven.

 
                                                                          CHAPTER 11
     
     
    Across town, Doctor George Franklin was having his dinner, too.  Crumbs from his corned beef on rye fell onto the gray battleship linoleum floor as he worked on Charlie Harper’s autopsy report.  The preparation room of Biederman's Mortuary was a stark, sterile place. It had tile running halfway up the walls and smelled of disinfectant.
    Franklin sat on a stool, filling out the report at a long counter set under glass-doored cabinets.   They were filled with the tools of the embalmer’s trade.  Long, pointy things, things with hoses.  The things they didn’t tell people about.  It might queer the sale of that ten-thousand-dollar funeral with the mahogany casket if one gave the suckers too much information about what they were doing to granddad in the backroom.
    He still wore the full-body apron he’d put on a few hours earlier when he’d begun the autopsy. His thick bifocals and bushy eyebrows gave him a sort of owlish look.  In the center of the room, beneath a high-intensity lamp laid Charlie, covered with a white sheet.
    A chill blew into the room as one of the double service doors to the rear parking lot opened.  Gary Nelson entered, stamping his feet on the rubber mat just inside.  The door behind him didn’t close completely and it’s that, more than his arrival, which diverted Franklin’s attention from his work.
    "Shut the door, will you?  You have to slam it when the weather’s like this.  Bad enough I have to be here this late.  I’m not going to freeze my ass off, too!"
    Nelson rubbed his hands together.
    "Gosh, I’m sorry, doc, but the boss wants this one bound up and closed as soon as possible."
    "Right.  We don’t want to have any of those jackasses with skis from up on the mountain getting the wrong idea about our sweet little community," came the terse reply. Franklin took another bite of his sandwich.
    "Mind if I smoke?"
    The doctor picked his pen back up and shook his head.
    "No, but you might want to ask Mr. Harper what he thinks."
    Gary pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket, slipped one of them between his lips, and lit up.
    "So what have we got?"
    Franklin stuffed the last crust into his mouth and slipped down from his stool.  He took a fresh pair of rubber gloves from a box on the counter.
    "It’s not very pretty."
    He pulled on the gloves with a crisp snap and walked over to the slab, motioning for Gary to follow.
    "Not exactly