Prologue
Dark suits. Black umbrellas. Pouring down rain. Black shoes caked in mud walk up, place a flower on the coffin, and then move away. My own shoes seem glued to the ground, unable to take that step.
This is it.
This is the day it all begins.
I have always been the underling, never trained for what is to come. My brother should be standing beside me, prepared to run the family, not lying in a coffin. Without Micha, the entire enterprise falls to me.
The family is waiting for me to take the reins, be the man, bring the business back to its former glory, solve the mystery, and continue the family line. They’ll expect me to maintain our profitability, keep the feds away, find Micha’s murderer, and pick out some unfortunate soul to join me in unholy matrimony.
There is no way I can do this alone.
“Don’t worry, son.” My father’s hand on my shoulder is uncharacteristically gentle. “I’ll always be here to guide you.”
Chapter 1—Newbie
I haul a cardboard box labeled “KITCHEN UTENSILS” up the flight of stairs, gripping it tightly against my body so it doesn’t fall when I fish out my keys. It takes some maneuvering, but I finally get the key into the lock and enter my brand-new apartment. New to me, anyway.
The apartment is spacious enough, especially for one person. The door opens to a living room partially filled with boxes of household items and trash bags of clothing. The living room opens into an eat-in kitchen, and I take the last box there. A quick trip back to the car for my hanging pothos plant, and my move-in is complete.
I stand in between the kitchen and the living room for a moment, examining my new surroundings and wondering where to start. I’d like to sit down, but the couch and chair that come with the apartment—a huge bonus when I selected the place—look uninviting to me. They’re not mine, and I feel like I should ask someone if it’s all right to sit there, but there is no one to ask.
“Do you mind if I sit, Vee?” I ask the plant.
The pothos doesn’t respond.
“I’ll take that as a no.” I drop down onto the couch, run my hand over the wooden armrest, get a splinter, and quickly jump up again. “Maybe that wasn’t a no!”
I spend the next hour looking through boxes until I find tweezers to get the splinter out of my finger. I wonder if I’m supposed to call a maintenance person to sand down the couch arms and decide it would be better to just do it myself. Working in Aunt Ginny’s antique shop, I’d refinished a lot of furniture and would likely do a better job than a maintenance guy anyway.
Aunt Ginny.
After spending the last twenty-two years looking after me, her only niece, my Aunt Ginny passed away four months ago, leaving me alone in the world. I wanted to keep her antique shop open after she passed but ultimately had to close the doors to the small building that held way too many memories.
I swallow hard and fight back tears as I reach over and stroke one of Vee’s leaves.
I can still see Aunt Ginny’s smiling, rosy-cheeked face as she woke me up for school or for weekend work at the shop. I remember her hand in mine as we walked to the library on Wednesdays to pick out new books to read, and I remember the smell of her perfume when she hugged me close. I remember the week after my twenty-second birthday when Sheriff Hardy came to the diner where I worked second shift to tell me my aunt was gone. She had been moving an early colonial trunk from one side of the store to the other when she had a massive stroke. There was nothing anyone could have done.
I glance at the sturdy envelope full of papers I had found in the back office of the shop—the papers that brought me here—and then quickly look away. I’m not ready to dive into that just yet.
A knock at my door brings me out of my melancholy musings. I open the door to find an African American woman on the latter side of middle age with a plate full of cookies in her hands.
“Hello there, dear!” she says with a big smile. “I’m Jessie, and I live just across the hall from you. I wanted to make sure my new neighbor got a proper welcome!”
She shoves the plate of cookies into my hands as she shoves her way into the apartment.
“I see they didn’t upgrade the furniture.” Jessie makes a clicking sound with her tongue. “I had to fight for a year before they finally upgraded mine. If you want, I can speak to management for you. Us Eastsiders have to stick together!”
“Eastsiders?”
“Of course, hunny,” she says as she examines the labels on my boxes. “We’re hardly in the west!”
“I guess not.” I thought Ohio was considered a midwestern state, but I wasn’t going to argue the point with her. I shake my head a little as Jessie takes the plate of cookies out of my hand and takes it over to the Formica-topped kitchen table.
“Do you need some help unpacking?” Jessie asks. “I’m great at organizing things! I used to work at one of those space-organizing shops. You know, where you come in and they start by handing you a couple of plastic tubs and then talk you into rebuilding your whole closet?” She laughs. “That was before I retired. I’m retired now, you know. And only fifty-eight!”
“That’s...great.” I try to sound enthusiastic, but it doesn’t really work. I’m a little overwhelmed by Jessie’s energy and not sure how to respond.
“I have a great financial advisor,” she says. “Do you have one? I can give you my guy’s number. He doesn’t usually take on new clients, but I can put in a good word for you. Oh! I love that plant!”
“That’s Vee,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
“You name your plants?” Jessie turns on me with narrowed eyes.
“Well, um, I only have the one. My Aunt Ginny gave me a cutting from one of hers years ago. It’s the only plant I’ve managed to keep alive.” I laugh nervously. “I’ve got a black thumb, I guess.”
“Hmm…” Jessie eyes me suspiciously for a moment. She raises one eyebrow briefly before she continues on. “Why Vee?”
“After my aunt, Virginia.” I glance at the plant and then down at my feet. “When she gave me the cutting, she swore that if I could keep anything alive, it would be a pothos plant. I’ve always been pretty bad about watering plants, and Vee the pothos just curls up her leaves when she needs water, and eventually I notice.” I laugh nervously. “I even killed a cactus. Watered that one too much, I guess.”
“Oh, that kind of Ginny!” Jessie seems oblivious to my blabbering and continues to focus on her own. “I thought you said Jenny. That makes sense, then.” She nods and then gives me a big smile. “You should bring Vee over and introduce her to my mother-in-law’s tongue, Marie. Named after my own mother-in-law, God rest her judgmental soul.” Jessie places her hand over her heart and looks up at the ceiling before breaking out in laughter. “That woman could give a tongue lashing like no other!”
I bite my lip, not sure if I should laugh at the joke or not.
“She never fit in with the Eastsiders, that’s for sure.”
There’s that term again.
“What exactly do you mean, ‘Eastsider’?” I ask.
Jessie pauses for the first time since she walked in. Her eyes narrow as she looks me up and down for a long moment. Just as I’m starting to get rather fidgety under her stare, she starts talking again.