A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) Read Free

they’d grown up in, and the upkeep on the old building, while Jane got half the rental income and one of the apartments on the top floor with a Bay Bridge view.
    At the instruction of Mrs. Goldstein, all the mirrors in the house were draped with black fabric and a large candle was placed on the coffee table in the center of the living room. They were supposed to sit on low benches or cushions, neither of which Charlie had in the house, so, for the first time since Rachel’s death, he went downstairs into the thrift shop looking for something they could use. The back stairs descended from a pantry behind the kitchen into the stockroom, where Charlie kept his office among boxes of merchandise waiting to be sorted, priced, and placed in the store.
    The shop was dark except for the light that filtered in the front window from the streetlights out on
Mason Street
. Charlie stood there at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the light switch, just staring. Amid the shelves of knickknacks and books, the piles of old radios, the racks of clothes, all of them dark, just lumpy shapes in the dark, he could see objects glowing a dull red, nearly pulsing, like beating hearts. A sweater in the racks, a porcelain figure of a frog in a curio case, out by the front window an old Coca-Cola tray, a pair of shoes—all glowing red.
    Charlie flipped the switch, fluorescent tubes fired to life across the ceiling, flickering at first, and the shop lit up. The red glow disappeared. “Okaaaaaaay,” he said to himself, calmly, like everything was just fine now. He flipped off the lights. Glowing red stuff. On the counter, close to where he stood, there was a brass business-card holder cast in the shape of a whooping crane, glowing dull red. He took a second to study it, just to make sure there wasn’t some red light source from outside refracting around the room and making him uneasy for no reason. He stepped into the dark shop, took a closer look, got an angle on the brass cranes. Nope, the brass was definitely pulsing red. He turned and ran back up the steps as fast as he could.
    He nearly ran over Jane, who stood in the kitchen, rocking Sophie gently in her arms, talking baby talk under her breath.
    “What?” Jane said. “I know you have some big cushions down in the shop somewhere.”
    “I can’t,” Charlie said. “I’m on drugs.” He backed against the refrigerator, like he was holding it hostage.
    “I’ll go get them. Here, hold the baby.”
    “I can’t, I’m on drugs. I’m hallucinating.”
    Jane cradled the baby in the crook of her right arm and put a free arm around her younger brother. “Charlie, you are on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not acid. Look around this apartment, there’s not a person here that’s not on something.” Charlie looked through the kitchen pass-through: women in black, most of them middle-aged or older, shaking their heads, men looking stoic, standing around the perimeter of the living room, each holding a stout tumbler of liquor and staring into space.
    “See, they’re all fucked up.”
    “What about Mom?” Charlie nodded to their mother, who stood out among the other gray-haired women in black because she was draped in silver Navaho jewelry and was so darkly tanned that she appeared to be melting into her old-fashioned when she took a sip.
    “Especially Mom,” Jane said. “I’ll go look for something to sit shivah on. I don’t know why you can’t just use the couches. Now take your daughter.”
    “I can’t. I can’t be trusted with her.”
    “Take her, bitch!” Jane barked in Charlie’s ear—sort of a whisper bark. It had long ago been determined who was the Alpha Male between them and it was not Charlie. She handed off the baby and cut to the stairs.
    “Jane,” Charlie called after her. “Look around before you turn on the lights. See if you see anything weird, okay?”
    “Right. Weird.”
    She left him standing there in the kitchen, studying his daughter,