Excerpt: DISARMED DEATH

“Now. Who’s this?” Les asked, as he approached the second table.
There was no paperwork on the clip board. He looked at the ‘check-in’ sheet just outside the preparation room.
This was where it was noted the time in and time out of individuals who still had the capacity to do it under their own steam. When a case was brought in over night, the individual who was making the delivery wrote the time they came to the funeral home and the time they locked the door.
There were no entries regarding the mysterious second body.
Les Sables was warming up for one of his lectures about being sure you had done your job before you left.
The likely first candidate would be David Doidge. David was the man ‘on call’ the previous evening and, if he was responsible for the slip-up, he would suffer the wrath of his boss. When that happened, the young embalmer could be expected to mope for most of the day, in the presence of his co-workers. The other, more productive result would be that, for a few days, at least, he would do good work trying to get back into the good graces of a man that everyone agreed, knew the business better than anyone else they would care to name.
If Doidge wasn’t the culprit, the recovery people would be threatened with a cancelled contract, but at least they would only hear Les ranting from the other end of the phone line.
Les was ready for both eventualities.
Les threw back the sheet that covered the mound of flesh in the center of the embalming table. At once he knew he wasn’t ready. And then he emptied his breakfast into the sink at the foot of the table.