“Damn, Bells. Creagan should start sending you undercover,” I comment.
“We’ll see. It might not have actually come to anything. But I got this in the mail today, along with a letter saying he got this out of storage. He said I could compare it to local obituary notices to prove they weren’t doing anything wrong. Seems a bit sketchy in the whole personal privacy scheme of things, but I’m not going to argue with it,” she tells me.
She reaches into the envelope, and the breath leaves my lungs as she pulls out a guest book.
“How did he know?” I murmur.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I told him the date of your mother’s supposed funeral,” Bellamy says. “I’m sure funeral homes keep things labeled in storage.”
I look over at her and have to think for a second about what she just said for it to make sense, then shake my head.
“No,” I say. “That’s not what I mean. I meant Greg. How did he know the guest book was coming?”
“He said it was coming?” Bellamy asks.
“Not exactly. But he mentioned it. He asked about the signature,” I say.
“Of course he did. He left that for you. He wanted to make sure you found it.”
I make a sound of acknowledgement, but there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that tells me there’s more to it than that. That man at the funeral home didn’t just suddenly change his mind. Bellamy’s somewhat legally ambiguous threats aside, I feel like someone’s helping me.
“Or maybe my mother is just ready for this to be over and gave him a little push,” I muse.
Bellamy gives me a sad smile and wraps her arm around my shoulders for a hug.
“What did Greg say about the book?” she asks.
“He asked if I found his signature, and then if I found the older book, the one my uncle signed.”
“The one your uncle signed?” she tilts her head. “He was there?”
“Why ‘supposed funeral’?”
I look up at Dean, almost startled by his voice.
“What?” I ask.
“Bellamy said your mother’s ‘supposed funeral’. What did she mean by that?”
“My mother was cremated,” I explain. “In a different state. I went to the memorial service and saw her urn. But it wasn’t a funeral. As far as I ever knew, there was no memorial service for her in Florida. But Bellamy went down there a few months ago to look into a couple of leads for me and found an announcement for a funeral for my mother. My father and I never attended it. I don’t know why there was one in Florida.”
Bellamy chimes in with her half of the story. “So I went to this funeral home and tried to get some information about it, but they wouldn’t talk. The only info they gave me was that someone else had been in there just the week before asking about the same service, and he’d insisted on signing the guest book.”
“That’s what you were talking about when Greg asked about his signature in the other guest book,” Dean acknowledges.
“Yes. We knew it was a message but couldn’t figure out what it meant. Especially because he signed it with the middle name Ron. Now I know Greg didn’t actually sign it, but someone he trusted did. He wanted to get my attention and make me look into her service more.”
“Why would there be a grave and a casket if she was cremated somewhere else?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Especially considering her urn is in my house. She was never interred in any way.”
I flip through the pages of the guest book, looking at the names. Dozens pack the lines of every page, representing the lives of so many people lost. It’s like looking at the charred beams left behind when a barn burns. You can still see what used to be, but it isn’t there anymore and can never really be again.
“A couple of these names look familiar,” Bellamy notes, running her fingertips down one of the pages.
“Look, this is the date that was on the announcement,” I tell her, pointing to the top of the page. “It looks like someone had used a felt-tip pen to write the date in small numbers at the top of each page to keep it organized. I know some of these names. They’re people my mother knew when I was younger. I don’t remember much about any of them, but I know I’ve heard their names.”
“Friends of your mother were invited to a fake funeral?” Dean asks.
“That’s what it seems like happened.”
“Maybe it was like people who elope and then go home and have a big wedding ceremony for their friends and family so they can feel like they witnessed the ceremony,” Bellamy suggests. “Your father wanted to bring your mother to be cremated and have a smaller service, but he knew your mother’s friends would want to give their respects.”
“Only in a second wedding ceremony the bride and groom are actually there. They don’t just prop up a wedding dress and tux and let everybody pretend,” I reply. “There was a casket, and there’s a grave. That’s a lot to go through just so people can feel like they paid their last respects.”
I scan through the next few pages, and Bellamy suddenly grabs my arm.
“Emma, look,” she says, pointing at the book. “Griffin. But it’s on the wrong day. He was there, but four days after her funeral.”
I look at the
