Page 1 of The Last One to Let You Down

“I think I’m finally done,” Thomas Hill declared, leaning back in his stool to admire his work.

“Wow,” Aaron Stutz said with a low whistle, coming up beside him to look at the deceased woman on the embalming table. “She looks incredible, Tom. I can’t even see the edges of your waxwork or anything.”

“Thanks.” Tom was absolutely beaming as he and his coworker both admired the fine restorative job he’d done.

The woman appeared to be resting peacefully, and there was no sign anything was amiss.

“Why’s it always gotta be the money side, huh?” Aaron snorted.

“That’s the way it goes,” Tom replied with a chuckle. “I guess that side of her face tasted better?”

Tom was an embalmer, and he’d been working at Crosby-Ayers Funeral Home in Mayfield, North Carolina, for over ten years. He’d done his apprenticeship there after graduating mortuary school and had stayed on once he’d gotten his license. The funeral home was busy enough to support him working solely as an embalmer, and he didn’t have to meet with families like Aaron, who was a funeral director.

Aaron had the right look for it. He was handsome, olive-skinned with curly black hair and a confident smile. He could offer sympathy with ease and wore a suit well.

Tom… not so much.

He felt like a silly kid playing dress-up when he wore a suit, and they were always too tight no matter how much he tried to lose the stubborn weight he carried around his stomach and thighs. He was only wearing one today because he thought he was going to have to help out at a funeral.

They hadn’t needed him after all, which was fine by Tom. He didn’t do well with the living, and he’d been told more than once that he came across as creepy.

He was quite pale with chin-length mousy brown hair, and his big blue eyes gave him an owlish appearance. He thought it made him look startled or afraid, not quite right for instilling confidence in a family that he was going to help them through their difficult time.

It also didn’t help that he was painfully shy.

Fortunately for Tom, his embalming talents usually kept him in the preparation room and away from families. His specialty was restorative art, repairing those who had suffered traumatic deaths so their families could see them again.

The woman he had just finished was a Mrs. Jan Winslow, who had died on a Friday, and her body was not found until the following Monday. During that time, her beloved Pomeranian, Mister Doodles, had eaten the entire right half of her face.

The money side, the right, was what families would view first because of how a person was normally placed in a casket. Discolorations or trauma on the left side were easier to hide, though damage of this magnitude still would have required intense restoration to repair.

“Walk me through it,” Aaron asked eagerly. “Like, tell me how you do it?”

“Well, you can’t do anything until after you’ve embalmed them.” Tom stood up and stretched, peeling off his gloves and dropping them into the biohazard trash. “The makeup and wax we use doesn’t stick that great to unembalmed skin. Slides right off if you’re not careful.

“The next step is cauterizing all of the exposed tissue. Embalming helps dry it out some, but you really wanna make sure it doesn’t leak, so we use other chemicals, cauterants like Dryene, to help. Once the skin is good and dry, then we start filling.”

“What do you fill it with? I mean, I saw her before. There was a lot missing.”

“You can use a bunch of different things depending on how big the wound is,” Tom replied, pulling open the prep room door and ushering Aaron out into the hallway.

It was often full of freshly delivered caskets, stretchers, and bags from the linen service, and today was no different. Tom had to carefully navigate around two caskets and a stack of towels, trying to lead Aaron back out to the offices to continue their conversation.

“Old school embalmers would use newspaper or cotton,” Tom went on, grabbing his suit jacket off the rack by the office door. “These days, they actually make compounds called ‘wound filler’ to, well, fill wounds. And then—” He paused when he heard a loud slam, glancing back over his shoulder to see what it was.

At the other end of the hall were three doors. The one on the right led into the walk-in cooler, the one directly opposite the office door was an exit that led into the side parking lot, and the one on the left connected the hallway to the garage. The coaches and limos were stored there, and there was a special door inside the garage for flower deliveries.

All the doors for employees required a code to enter except for that one, and it stayed unlocked during business hours for flower deliveries. Someone could get inside the garage to drop off arrangements, but they wouldn’t be able to get into the hallway.

The hallway door to the garage had been left propped open, probably from a casket being delivered earlier, and the sound Tom had heard was the flower delivery door slamming inside the garage. As his heart began to pound in anticipation, he forgot all about Aaron.

HFG might be here.

Hot Flower Guy.

“Hey, where are you going?” Aaron protested.

“Just go to the office.” Tom was already halfway back down the hall. “I’ll meet you in there.”