Footsteps echoed down the hallway on the marble floors and I turned in that direction.
Olga slowed when she saw me, her face morphing from a fake smile to an annoyed frown. Her brown hair was plastered with hairspray, a giant wave lifting off and curling over her forehead. The end of her hair was curled in the opposite direction, the whole effect looking like some sort of ski ramp on top of her head. I didn’t detect much makeup on her face, but the centers of her cheeks were just as pink as they’d been when we’d wrestled in the snow. She wore a gray turtleneck sweater beneath a navy blazer and slacks that matched the blazer and emphasized her wide hips. Older brown flats carried her to a stop a few feet away from me.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I was hoping we could talk,” I said, bracing myself in case she charged.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she said. “Unless you’re here to confess.”
“I’m not here to confess. I didn’t kill your brother.”
“Oh, baloney.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She folded her arms across her ample chest.
I took her silence as a yes.
“If I killed Olaf, why would I have left his body in my home?” I said. “Don’t you think I would’ve tried to hide him or something?”
She blinked, but didn’t say anything.
“I met your brother one time,” I said, holding up my index finger. “We had a very nice night. But I never spoke to him again. I never saw him again. And I didn’t hurt him or kill him or do anything else to him.”
She blinked again several times until tears sprouted in the corners of her eyes like tiny ice cubes. “Oh, horse pucky.”
Then she sat down in one of the expensive looking chairs and cried for five solid minutes.
I stood there for the first few minutes, unsure what to do with myself. Then I sat down in the chair next to her and gently put my arm around her shoulders, still wary in case she decided to hit me with an uppercut. But, instead, she leaned into me and cried even harder.
Olga was a professional cryer. She didn’t hold anything back and by the time she was done, her eyes were red and swollen, her nose was dripping everywhere and my shoulder was soaked in tears and snot.
Which, as a mom, I had plenty of experience with and wasn’t grossed out by.
When she was nearly dehydrated, she stood and walked over to a massive flower arrangement on a small table. She reached behind the flowers and pulled out a small package of tissues. She put one to her nose and blew with the force and noise of a large goose. She wadded up the tissue and dropped it in the wastebasket.
“I have them hidden everywhere,” she said. “You can never have enough of them in a funeral home.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing another tissue and dabbing at her eyes and mottled cheeks. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure it’s hard.”
She nodded. “Yes. It is. I miss my brother terribly.”
I nodded, glad that she no longer seemed interested in harming me physically.
“And I’m sorry about the…incident outside your home,” she said, her eyes flitting in my direction. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“It’s over and done with,” I said. “I’m sorry, too.”
She nodded and wiped at her eyes. “Would you like some coffee? I was about to go get some upstairs.”
I stood. “Sure.”
I followed her down a long hallway decorated with more flowers and pictures of beaches and nature, more feeble attempts to be soothing for those in mourning. We passed a room that looked like a receiving or reception area and then approached a flight of stairs. I followed her up them and around a corner to a door wedged into an A-frame.
“I got the job here a little over a year ago,” she explained, twisting the knob. “Lucky for me, the small apartment was vacant and mine for the taking.”
“Um, yes, lucky,” I said.
The small apartment had polished wood floors, a worn green couch and lots and lots of clowns.
Clowns.
There were framed pictures of clowns. There were figurines of clowns. There were stuffed clowns. There were happy clowns. There were sad clowns. There were super scary clowns that looked like they wanted to murder the other clowns.
Clowns.
I might have gasped in horror. Loudly.
Olga must’ve noticed me looking around the room because she said, “I like clowns.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling like all the clowns were watching me. “I can…see that.”
“I’ve liked them since I was a kid,” she said, walking over to a small kitchen counter and flicking the switch on a small coffee maker. “Olaf did, too. We actually both had done some amateur clowning.”
“Clowning?”
“Well, we didn’t go to clown school,” she explained. “It was too expensive. But we started experimenting with makeup and playing around. We did kids parties as a part-time job when we were in high school.”
Weird. Olaf hadn’t mentioned his interest in clowning on our dinner date. Probably because I would’ve run screaming from the restaurant.
“I still do the occasional party or carnival,” Olga said, pulling two mugs from the cabinet. “But only by referral.”
I had no idea what that meant. “Of course.”
“Sit.”
“Excuse me?”
She motioned to the couch. “Sit down.”
“In there?” I asked.
She stared at me like I was mentally disabled. “Yes, in there. On the couch. With the clowns.”
I forced my feet to move and stared down at the floor as I walked so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with any of the murderous-looking clowns.
“I’ve actually found that it helps with doing make up for the services here at the mortuary,” she explained, continuing the conversation.
“Uh, what?”
She watched the coffee drip from the pot. “When a person is brought here, one of my jobs is to prepare them for their service. Most people require a fair amount of makeup. So some of my clowning experience has paid off.”
“That’s…nice,” I said because “That’s really friggin’ weird” would’ve been rude.
She poured coffee into each of the mugs and brought them over. She handed me mine and I clutched it in my hands as she took a seat on the sofa next to me. She gestured to the cream and sugar on the center of the coffee table, but I shook my head.
“I spent last night with Olaf,” she said, blowing on the surface of her coffee.
I tried not to drop mine. “What?”
“He’s here,” she said, then she pointed to the floor. “Downstairs. They brought his body over here yesterday.”
“Oh,” I said, even though that explained nothing.
She stared into her coffee, her eyes wrinkling, threatening to spit tears again. “I knew he was down there. So I grabbed a blanket and went and slept next to his drawer. It was just like when we were kids. Except he wasn’t snoring because he’s dead.”
Really. Friggin’. Weird.
“I’m sorry,” I said because I literally couldn’t think of one other single thing to say to that.
She waved a hand in the air. “I’m just overly emotional. It’s probably why I attacked you the other day.”
Probably.
She took a long sip from her coffee and it seemed to steady her. She took a deep breath and leaned back into the couch. “You know, Olaf really enjoyed his date with you.”
I smiled at her. “We had a very nice time.”
“He wanted to ask you out again,” she said. “I mean, before that other man came into your life.”