Page 88 of The Dearly Departed

I nearly snorted as I muttered, "Try me."

He popped the fry into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before sighing and saying, "All right. So, you know how I started helping Leonard with the books? And how I've been transferring all of his freakin' composition notebooks into the computer?"

I couldn't help but laugh.

Good ol' Leonard Llewellyn had been attached at the hip to his precious notebooks, and when Shawn suggested incorporating a computer into the mix, the old man damn near threw a temper tantrum. He insisted that the digital age was going to be the end of our society, that he never wanted to give up the tried-and-true methods of our ancestors, but eventually, Shawn had convinced him to add just a bit more organization to the business … with the promise that he wouldn’t take away his notebooks.

"Well, as I've been transferring records over, I started noticing something," he said, folding his arms against the table. "Some of the funerals we've done … he never took money for."

I tipped my head as my mind took off instantly, running a mile a minute. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, there are funerals we did for free."

"Well, I mean, which ones? Because he never charged for kids."

Leonard had been of the firm belief that parents grieving the loss of their young children should never have to worry about funeral expenses after going through such an unthinkable tragedy.

"Not any of those," Shawn replied. "We—the three of us—had nothing to do with these funerals. Leonard handled them all. I, uh … I looked up a couple of the names. Not all of them—there's quite a few of them—"

"How many?"

His cheeks puffed out with his exhale, and then he said, "I don't know. I'm not done transferring all the records over to the computer, but so far, I've counted at least a few dozen."

"A few dozen?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "One of them, Tomas Nolan … I vaguely remember putting him up on the website, like, ten years ago or something like that. Maybe even more than that. I don’t know. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but when I saw we had done his services for nothing, that felt weird to me. So, I looked him up."

"And?"

"I had to dig a lot," he explained. "Like, a lot. Guy's been dead for a while. And his name didn't bring up a fucking thing. Just the obituary I had put up forever ago. But I did a reverse image search of the picture we had used, and although I didn't pull up an exact match, I did find something."

He paused to drag a palm over his chin, and I rolled my eyes.

"Shawn, dude, I get you're trying to build the anticipation here, but come on."

He released an exhale, visibly uncomfortable. "He was murdered in front of his kid, shot point-blank in the face. They never found the guy who did it. Honestly, I'm not really sure anybody cared enough to look. Seemed like he was probably involved in some shady shit. Drugs and whatever."

"And we did his funeral for nothing?"

"No money was exchanged."

"What about the others you looked up?"

"Same deal," he replied.

"So, they were all killed."

"Well, at least the ones I could find anything about," he said, biting his lip as he nodded. "And I'm just wondering, why the fuck was Leonard doing their services for free? I mean, I understand we've never discriminated against anybody. Like, remember those people … shame on me, I can't remember their names, but their son … he had been in prison for … something—I don't even know what—but we did his services. Do you remember that?"

"Yeah," I muttered, nodding. "The Shumakers. He had been locked up for, um … aggravated assault, I think it was. Something like that."

"Right, and we didn't turn them away because their son had done some questionable shit. We showed him the same respect we’d show anyone else—and rightfully so. But we didn't do it for nothing. So, why were we doing that for these people?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea,” I said, although I could make an educated guess … but I wouldn't. Not aloud anyway.

"And that's not all of it."

"Oh, great," I muttered sardonically.