Drop Dead Sexy

I shot him a pissed look before flopping down on the leather loveseat across from my desk. I moaned in ecstasy as I slid my heels off. Allen was not only my co-worker. He was also co-owner in the funeral home. It had been willed to the both of us upon our father’s death. At the time, Allen was only twenty, and the last thing he wanted was to have anything to do with the death business. But over the years, he had slowly come to embrace it. Since he hadn’t been to mortuary school, he used his finance degree to manage the financial side of the business. He also helped out with funeral planning as well as in the transportation department aka picking up the bodies.

Although Allen had yet to marry, his single status didn’t seem to grieve our mother quite as much as mine did. Maybe it was because as a woman I was supposed to marry young while my brother was allowed to be a swinging bachelor sowing his wild oats before settling down. Quite a few ladies had tried to get their hooks in Allen, but so far, he had managed to evade them. While he would never admit it, I knew his heart belonged to Maggie, the local florist. Although it wasn’t part of his job description, he was forever volunteering to go do floral pickups.

“Yeah, thanks, Bernie. Talk to you later.” When Allen hung up, he rose out of my chair.

“Our newest customer is waiting for you in the prep room.”

I stilled rubbing my feet. “Ugh, fabulous.” Considering the afternoon I’d had, I wanted nothing more than a glass of wine and a warm bath, but it didn’t look like I was going to get either of them.

An amused look twinkled in Allen’s dark eyes. “So I hear you had a little scuffle while I was gone.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’d hardly call it a ‘scuffle’. Just one guy got punched. Well, two if you consider me hitting that fool with the floral arrangement.”

Allen grinned. “First rule of Funeral Home Fight Club: No one talks about Funeral Home Fight Club.”

“Har-fucking-har,” I muttered, as I rose to my feet.

After walking over to my desk, I held out my hand, and Allen passed me the tan folder with the deceased’s information. I glanced down at the folder. “Oh, no, it’s Mr. Peterson.” At Allen’s blank look, I said, “Don’t you remember trick-or-treating at his house back in the day? His wife always made cookies and candy for us.”

Allen slowly nodded his head. “Damn, he got old.”

“He was old back then. He’s pretty much ancient now.” I grimaced. “Well, he was ancient.”

That was one of the hardest aspects of being a mortician in the town you grew up in. You pretty much knew ninety percent of everyone who was laid out on the mortuary table. Sometimes it was easier aspirating organs and draining blood from people you didn’t know. It had been excruciating, but I had forced myself to prepare my father. I felt I had owed him that much for all the love and support he’d given me over the years, not to mention teaching me all I knew.

I tucked the folder under my arm before heading out the door. My footsteps echoed through the silence as I made my way down the familiar hallway lined with family portraits. Allen and I had been the third generation of Sullivan’s to live in the house. My grandparents had bought the sprawling Victorian monstrosity when my dad was just a baby. Because of my grandfather’s gift at body preparation, the other funeral home in town quickly went out of business.

It wasn’t too long before people from surrounding counties started bringing their deceased to him. Business boomed as did my grandparent’s family. After trying to corral five children in the upstairs area during visitation and funerals, my grandmother insisted on a home of their own. Since my grandfather did everything she asked out of both love and fear, they bought the house next door to live in, leaving the family quarters abandoned for almost twenty years.

As the oldest son and heir to the Sullivan Funeral Home empire, my dad was offered the living quarters when he married my mom, and they had happily accepted. Well, my mom had been less than thrilled at first, but she knew when she married my dad that the death business was part of his life. He had sweetened the pot by having the upstairs gutted and remodeled to make a separate living room and kitchen along with three bedrooms and two baths. He also had the back staircase redone, so that she could get upstairs to our house without having to go through the funeral home.

After pouring myself a cup of coffee in the community kitchen, I walked back down the hall to the door labeled Employees Only. I typed in the code on the keypad before stepping into the preparation room where Mr. Peterson awaited me. Turning on the switch to my right sent the florescent lights above my head humming to life.

I’m sure most people would imagine a body preparation room that resembled something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. You had one wall of cabinets filled with everything from cosmetics to replacement eyeballs. In the center of the room was a stainless steel mortuary table that sat over a drain. Beside the table were the machines for embalming.