“We all die,” Helen said. “You brought your own chemical war.”
“Nope,” Savannah said, tossing her a white mask. “Put this on. I am trained in the use of household cleaning products.”
Helen fitted the mask over her face. She wasn’t sure how much protection it was, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
Kristi looked frantically for some escape from the living room, but Helen and Savannah blocked the only exit.
“Sit down.” Savannah gestured toward the couch with the bottle. The white mask took the humanity from her face and the country softness from her voice.
Kristi started to tremble.
“I said, ‘Sit down.’ ”
Kristi sat on the puffy white couch. The love seat was covered with clothes. Helen wondered if Kristi had been sorting things for Goodwill. These outfits looked too sedate for a sexy young woman. Heck, they were too conservative for Helen. Their high necks, long sleeves and long skirts were more suitable for a grandmother on her fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Helen picked up a gray wool dress. It was slit down the back and had a brownish stain near the waist. Odd. Who would want that? Next, she examined a pale blue dress. It, too, was cut down the back.
Kristi moved uneasily and started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut.
“What’s going on here?” Savannah said. “Why are those clothes slit down the back?”
“I don’t know.” Kristi’s eyes darted like fish in a pond.
Helen picked up a scissors with a scrap of pale blue fabric stuck in the blades. “I think you know.” She sounded like an android in that mask.
Savannah had the spray bottle in Kristi’s face again. “I think you’re gonna tell me.”
Kristi hesitated. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead.
“They’re corpse clothes,” Kristi blurted.
“What?” Helen and Savannah said together.
“They were worn by dead people. They’re slit up the back, because that’s how you dress a corpse.”
Helen dropped the blue dress and wiped her hand on her pants. Now she was glad for the mask. “Where did you get them? Are you robbing graves?”
“I bought them from a funeral home. The families changed their mind before the bodies went on view.”
“What’s that mean?” Helen said.
“They decided the blue dress didn’t look good on Aunt Tillie, so they brought the yellow suit for her to wear instead.
The family doesn’t take back the blue dress. They can’t. It’s been on a dead body. Someone who worked at the funeral home sold it to me.”
Helen was so creeped out, she could hardly look at the gruesome pile of clothes. Savannah was motionless. Her finger was still on the trigger.
“What do you do with it?” Helen said.
“Corpse clothes go for major money,” Kristi said. Helen studied her pale face. The mouth was pinched. The eyes were hard and shiny as coffin handles. “Some guys like a woman to wear corpse clothes when they do her.”
That was kinky even for Florida.
“I can’t believe funeral homes make all these mistakes.”
Helen pointed to the pile of slit dresses.
Kristi shrugged, as if she didn’t care what Helen believed.
“You’re not telling us the whole truth.” Savannah pointed the spray bottle at Kristi’s hard blue eyes.
“Not my eyes. No, please,” Kristi pleaded. She was ghost white. “I’ll tell you. I only bought one real dress worn by a dead person. I made the others myself.”
“You counterfeit corpse clothes?” Helen said.
“I have to. The demand is greater than the supply. Besides, buying corpse clothes is risky. A funeral director could lose his license if he’s caught. So I go to the resale shops and buy good secondhand clothes. I never pay more than thirty-five dollars. I slit the dresses up the back. That’s what I was doing when you knocked on the door.”
“What are those stains?” Helen said, pointing to the brown spot on the back of the dress.
“They’re supposed to be formaldehyde. Sometimes it, you know, leaks from the bodies. The freaks pay extra for that. I stain some clothes with unscented hair spray and food coloring and say it’s formaldehyde. People don’t know what formaldehyde looks like.
“My biggest sellers are the white lace dresses. I get a thousand dollars for those, twelve hundred if they’re stained.” She sounded proud of herself.
“What’s the big deal with white lace—a bridal thing?”
“No, it was the dress on the corpse in the opening of
Helen flashed on Kristi with her white-lace dress and lily bouquet, inviting the leather man into her coffin. Of course.
It all made sense.
“That’s why you had white lace and lilies last night, Helen said. “The Six Feet Unders. What exactly do they do?”
“Not much.” Kristi rolled her eyes. “It’s some kinky old guys and a couple of weird women. They like to screw in a coffin. They’re old and boring and think it’s a big deal.
Maybe it is for them. They’ll be in their own coffins soon enough.”
“One question,” Helen said. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Is it comfortable doing it in a coffin?”
“It’s not bad, once you get over the idea. It’s roomier than the back seat of a Toyota but not as big as a twin bed. It’s got a mattress. The springs don’t squeak, either.”
Savannah interrupted in a flat, dead voice. “My sister was doing this? Wearing grave clothes and...” She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest.
Helen suddenly felt ashamed for asking about sex in a coffin.
Kristi smiled, showing small pointed teeth. It was a predator’s smile. She would enjoy hurting Savannah.
“For awhile she was real popular. Those fat old guys go for the spunky blondes. She had big tits, too. The geezers like to grope those.”
Savannah’s hand trembled on the trigger, and Kristi realized she’d gone too far.
“But she stopped,” she said, quickly. “She really did.”
“When?” Savannah said.
“Just before she disappeared. She said she found something that was going to change her life. Something big.
Laredo said she wouldn’t be just a pair of tits. She’d be somebody important. She’d get married and live in a mansion.”
“What did she find?”
“Uh...”
“Tell me what you saw or you’ll never see another thing.”
Savannah’s finger twitched on the trigger. Helen held her breath. If she lunged for the bottle, Savannah would shoot Kristi for sure.
“It was a computer disk.” Kristi’s voice was a highpitched shriek of panic. “It was red. Plain red. She showed it to me. I saw it. She said that little disk was her winning lottery ticket.”
“What was on it?”
“I—” Kristi started to cry.
“Answer me, or you’ll really have something to cry about.”
“It was stuff from Hank’s computer. She said he’d been laundering money. He was into some other fraud, too. She said I’d be surprised at who was involved. Big names. That’s all she said.”
“What did she do with the disk?”
“She put it in her purse. Later, she told me she hid it.”
