Wolf Junction may not have been as advanced both socially and economically as the rest of the country, but it was filled with history. To me, this made up for a lot.
The home I’d rented was an enormous Victorian style house with a gorgeous wrap around porch. It was far too large for one person, but it had a two-room office set up with a space to act as the waiting room and its own entrance. I was of the frame of mind that having my office under the same roof where I lived would reduce my overhead. After all, I’d built up a considerable amount of debt putting myself through school. Fortunately, my holistic care skills paid for most of my living expenses during my years of education, but there was still the loan for the actual cost of schooling looming over me. As luck would have it, the place came partially furnished. So, I lived in a one-hundred plus year old house that was the size of a mini-hotel with enough décor in it to make it look occupied. Had the place not come with furnishings enough to soften the interior of the grand house, my bank account would have allowed me to select a room or two to furnish while leaving the rest to the ghosts whose voices echoed off the walls some nights.
I’m not being dramatic when I say the walls echoed voices. It was my own fault for going through a realtor and renting the place from the recommendation of the realtor and the photos I saw on the website. Had I inspected it in person, I would have found the set up in the basement for the mortician to embalm and prepare the bodies to be laid out upstairs in the viewing rooms.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, the realtor left the fact that I was renting a former funeral home out of all communications. Since there was no law stating that its former use needed to be divulged, there was nothing I could do about it but remind myself that I was a woman of science and medicine. The residue of death didn’t, shouldn’t, and wouldn’t bother me.
For a small community, the town of Wolf Junction managed to keep two funeral homes in business right up until Jack Crowley, the mortician who owned my home, died a quiet and peaceful death three years earlier. Running a funeral home had been a Crowley family tradition right up until Jack’s death ended it. Jack’s wife pre-deceased him by ten years. Sadly, they were childless and not one of his relatives felt obliged to pick up where he left off. The house was one of the few things left in the estate that the relatives hung on to. Whether it was for sentimental reasons, since it was a Crowley who’d built it, or if it was for investment purposes, I couldn’t say. They tried to find another funeral director to take the place over, but, after three years of no interest, they put it with a realtor to rent and, well, you know the rest.
Business was slow at first. Some of the townspeople were leery about patronizing a doctor who lived in and worked out of a funeral home, while others worried about the fact that I was so young. It didn’t help that the doctor I replaced -who had died of old age in his sleep- treated the townsfolk for over sixty years. His shoes were tough ones to fill.
What went to my advantage was my knowledge of alternative remedies. I quickly discovered that the locals were more trusting of things that came from mother nature than they were with what came from the pharmacist at the neighborhood drug store. So, I started out peddling the holistic side of my services and slowly slipped the medical into the mix.
By the end of the third month, things looked like they just might work out for me. Although there was still room for plenty more, I had enough patients to fill up at least three days out of the week; although I spread them out throughout the five as best I could. I used my free time to explore the area, as well as my enormous house.
Wolf Junction was a small town amidst other small towns that were nestled in the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was delighted to discover the myriad of antique shops these towns possessed. History abounded.
It was in one of these quaint shops that I struck up a conversation with the woman behind the sales counter. She was old enough to qualify as an antique herself, but she had the feistiness of a young woman in her persona. Her name was Megan Hastings and I found her delightful.
Megan was a walking encyclopedia of just about any topic that came up, or so it seemed. She also had a great head on her shoulders when it came to pragmatic subjects; such as the fact that I was rambling around in that grand house when I could have the company of a boarder or two.
What a great idea!
As luck would have it, Megan even knew of a few professionals who would appreciate living arrangements like that. One was a social worker who traveled through the area regularly checking on her cases. Megan was sure that she would appreciate having a steady place to stay where she could keep a few belongings.
The other would probably be a more temporary situation. He was a novelist who believed he wrote best if he planted himself in the geographical area that he was placing his characters in and exposed himself to the environments or situations that were similar to what he created in his story lines. It was her understanding that he planned on staying for at least a year. He’d visited Megan’s shop and struck up a conversation with her enough for her to feel confident in recommending him as a boarder. She had no doubt he’d be thrilled to leave the boarding house he spoke so poorly about.
It took less than two weeks to interview these two potential boarders, check their references, and set them up in one of the many bedrooms that my house had. In fact, a few of the rooms had Jack and Jill bathrooms so I was able to rent out the two rooms to create a little private living space as well for each of them. Megan was not only a feisty old gal with a winning personality, she was a genius.
I took the rent from the boarders and designated it to help pay off my innumerable debts from school. This allowed me to re-invest money that I earned from my health care practice back into it.
Life was good.
Angela McGraw was a few years older than me, but not by much. We looked to be about the same size too, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where my hair was sleek and dark, and my skin fair and unblemished, she sported a coppery head of wiry curls and flesh so peppered with freckles that it was impossible to count them. As my eyes traced them to the collar of her pale blue cotton blouse, I had to fight the urge to ask if they continued onto her back and chest. I guessed they did, but that was just a guess. I envied her those striking green eyes. Mine were such a common brown. I noticed that they resembled rich emerald when she spoke passionately on a subject; which was often.She’d been working as the county’s traveling social worker for five years. It was easy to tell that she loved her job by the way she lost herself into conversing about it whenever the opportunity arose.She was less outgoing and gene
Life was going so well that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that I’d taken the job with the intention of being the savior who discovered what was causing so many deaths. It was probably because there had been no deaths since my arrival. That changed on the anniversary of my fifth month in town.It was a Wednesday evening. It had been a particularly grueling day with difficult and uncooperative patients. Old man Smithson’s gout was acting up again and, of course, he had to argue with me as to what diet worked best to prevent the gout that was returning more and more frequently. Grannie Oleson had yet another asthma attack. As hard as I tried to convince her that she was allergic to the twelve cats she owned, I got nowhere. So, I simply treated her with herbs to help keep her passageways as clear as could be expected under the circumstances and wrote a prescription for an inhaler that Iwas certain she’d
I’d had no call to be around Zacharias Bolt before Jacob’s death. I thought it unfortunate that I found him to be a bit odd, since his was the only funeral home for several towns and I was the recently appointed official county medical examiner.Zacharias’ family had been in stiff competition with the Crowley family for the funeral business of the area for several generations. This, along with an over-abundance of fumes from embalming chemicals were surely what lend to his unlikeable personality. The smirk on his narrow and pinched face when he inspected the remnants of the Crowley morgue while delivering Jacob’s corpse to me was an immediate indication as to the person I’d be dealing with. He wasted no time comparing his state of the art set up to my pathetic -yes, he used the word ‘pathetic’- and antiquated one while speculating on the poor workmanship that surely was produced as a result.He clearly had no
I’d spent far too much time over lunch with Angela and Peter. By the time I got back home, it was almost four o’clock. There was no sense in starting the autopsy when I’d have to man my office for walk-ins from six pm until eight pm.I checked my calendar for the next day and saw that it was full. That left me no choice. I’d have to perform the autopsy after I closed the office at eight that evening. Since I’d had minimal sleep the night before because of a guilty conscience over my lustful actions in the presence of a dead man after working well into the night taking an inventory and moving a few things around in the morgue, I’d been looking forward to a decent night’s sleep. Hopefully I could discover what killed Jacob quickly and that would still happen.I decided to relax until it was time to run my office, so I fixed myself a cup of hot tea, grabbed the mystery I’d started a few da
With less than an hour before I had to open the office for potential walk-in patients, I decided to make a quick run to the grocery store for a few incidentals that I was about to run out of. I was debating about buying Folgers coffee or a new organic Hawaiian blend when the handsome Dr. Thomason came up behind me.“I’d go for the Folgers,” he said in the most intimate fashion imaginable into my left ear.I could feel his breath on the back of my head as my body tingled from head to toe. “I’ve always liked Folgers, but it’s not organic.”“I’d be careful with organic if I were you,” he offered. “That one’s fine because it comes from the United States and we have strict regulations, but a lot of the organic food comes from countries without laws to protect you. Organic to them isn’t always organic as we see it. You’re safer with American grown, even if it&rs
In the two hours that the office was opened for walk-in business I saw one sprained wrist that was acquired at an after-school sporting event and one ear infection. In between them I sat and chatted about anything and everything with Peter. I found him super easy to relax around.Evelyn arrived around ten minutes after eight. Peter asked to assist me with her foot infection and, since Evelyn had no objections, I accepted his help. I listened and observed as Peter peppered her with a myriad of questions that I would have never thought to ask. Little by little he rooted out of her tight-lipped persona that she kicked her shoes off immediately upon getting home and didn’t put them back on until she was required to for work. There are many people who don’t wear shoes at home, so that, in itself, wasn’t the issue. The issue was the fact that she lived in a communal environment with dirt floors and an outhouse. This meant that, even t
It was well after midnight before Max was satisfied that he’d checked all he could for a clue as to who stole the body enough to depart. I was exhausted. In fact, I was so exhausted that when Peter said that he should probably call a cab to take him to his hotel instead of imposing on me to drive him there, I almost agreed. Instead, I suggested that he stay in one of the many rooms my house possessed.I struggled to keep my body functioning long enough to supply him with some of the things I’d been taught by my parents to keep on hand in the event of unexpected guests, such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, showering supplies, and in his case, shaving supplies. He smiled appreciatively at me as he hugged his goodies to his chest and made his way to the room I’d suggested he use. It had an en suite bathroom, as did many, so he wouldn’t have to venture back out into the hall untilhe’d slept and was refreshed.
The day went faster than I thought it would. True to his word, Peter lessened my load by helping me with whatever patients I felt comfortable having him see. It was both refreshing and reassuring when several of them insisted on seeing me. I know it’s silly of me to worry, but with such a large education debt looming over me, I was a little fearful of failure. Not to mention that walking in Peter’s shadow was a bit intimidating.He kept himself busy in between patients by tending to some of the filing and making reminder phone calls to those who had appointments the next day.When the last patient left, I leaned against the door after locking it and smiled my thanks to him. “I appreciate your help.”“We make a good team,” he said as hestood up and stretched in a cat-like manner. “How about some dinner?”“I’m too tired to cook.”“I’ve lived