Riley Thorn and the Corpse in the Closet by Lucy Score

22

1:58 p.m., Sunday, August 16

When Nick pulled up in front of Riley’s parents’ house, they found Roger in the front yard, spraying Daisy the cow with a garden hose.

“Okay. Let’s agree that our families are equally weird,” he said.

“We’ll probably miss them when we’re drinking in the Costa Rican rainforest,” Riley mused.

They got out of the vehicle. “What’s the big emergency, Dad?” she called.

But he didn’t respond. Nick noticed he was wearing headphones. Just a man, some music, and his cow. Roger Thorn was a simple man.

With an eye-roll and several muttered four-letter words, Riley led the way onto the porch and in through the front door.

“Mom,” she bellowed.

Blossom appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a flowy tunic over an equally flowy skirt. Both were embroidered with a pattern that looked suspiciously like female anatomy. She had a dusty cardboard box in her hands and a cigarette in her mouth.

“It’s about time!” Blossom announced.

Riley gasped. “Are you smoking?”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” Blossom lied, stomping down the stairs and shoving the box at Nick.

“Hi, Nick. It’s nice to see you. Can I borrow your strong arms for a second?”

“Mom, if you called us over here just to get Nick to move some furniture again—”

But Blossom was already rounding the corner, heading toward the sun porch where she did her tarot readings.

Nick peeked into the box and found dozens of white pillar candles. All with a fine coat of dust on the wax.

He put it down next to the front door and followed the women.

“Why is Dad hosing down Daisy?” Riley asked.

“Your father and that cow.” Blossom tsked. “Daisy has cow dandruff, and her constant scratching on the fence has Chelsea in a tizzy. Your father is using special cow dandruff shampoo on her to stop his precious heifer from itching.”

“Is that the big emergency?”

Blossom stubbed the cigarette out in an incense burner. “No, of course not. Nick, be a dear and reach into the top shelf of this closet and get all those boxes down for me?”

“What’s with the headphones?” Riley asked.

“It was the only way I could get Roger to agree not to leave until my mother goes home. Noise-canceling headphones. He’s been wearing them 24/7.”

Nick dragged a chair into the closet and went to work unloading the top shelf while Riley interrogated her mother.

“What is going on?” Riley demanded.

“Oh. You know your grandmother. She lives to hurl my life into chaos,” Blossom said.

He pulled the first box down. It was labeled Cloaks. The second box was labeled Event Crystals.

“Are these what you’re looking for?” he asked, setting the boxes on the rug.

“Yes! Thank you, Nick. You are such a big help.”

“Mom, why is Nick getting your demonstration supplies down?”

Riley’s voice was getting higher and tighter.

“Your grandmother has decided that the best way to repair our family’s reputation in the eyes of the guild is to host a public seance.”

Riley’s gasp had Nick checking the doorway for a gun-wielding maniac.

“No!”

“Yes. Tonight.”

“No!”

“At your place since ours isn’t big enough, and she felt that Wander’s studio decor was too ‘reassuring.’ Whatever the hell that means.”

Riley looked like she was about to collapse, so Nick guided her to the couch and pushed her down.

Blossom dug through the box of cloaks, muttering to herself. “Aha! Here it is.” She tossed a black, filmy hunk of material to Riley. It hit her in the chest and fell on her lap.

“What. Are. You. Doing?”

Nick had never heard that particular tone from Riley before. Sure. She’d yelled at him plenty. And he was quite fond of the noises she made when he was inside her. But this sounded flat and a little scary.

“It’s your outfit for tonight. All the Basil women are required to attend and participate.”

Riley collapsed against the couch. “This is insane! How is Grandmother communing with the dead in front of my neighbors going to fix our ‘image problem’?” she demanded, using air quotes.

“Well, maybe it’s because she ‘also invited’ a couple of guild representatives and a handful of ‘journalists,’” Blossom shot back.

The woman clearly didn’t understand how air quotes worked.

“Journalists?” Riley’s voice had entered the pitch that made dogs start howling. Daisy mooed outside.

“Everything all right in there?” Roger bellowed from the window.

“Oh, go back to washing your cow!” Blossom yelled with a flutter of her hands.

“Mom, I’m not doing this. I don’t want any more media attention.”

“I know you don’t, sweetie. But I don’t know what to tell you,” Blossom said, opening the box of crystals and taking inventory. “Riley has performance anxiety,” she explained to Nick.

“It’s not performance anxiety!”

“When the girls were little, we spent a week with my mother in her free-thinkers spiritualist camp, and she enrolled Riley and Wander in a talent showcase.”

“Kill me now,” Riley said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Wander got up and was able to sniff out an entire week’s worth of dinners the senior guild member had. But poor Riley. You can understand why she’s been so hesitant to use her powers when her vision broke up her father and me.”

Nick felt like some kind of reaction was required, so he nodded.

“Anyway, the poor kid froze and just stood there on stage like a robot.”

“They threw cabbage at me,” Riley whispered.

He squeezed her hand and decided that the Thorns may have just edged out the Santiagos in the Weirdness World Cup.

“It was for good luck,” Blossom insisted. “Cabbage wards off bad spirits.”

“Well, consider me a bad spirit because it warded me off. You can’t make me do this.” Riley’s big brown eyes settled on Nick and pleaded with him.

“We’ll figure this out, Thorn. I promise.”

“It won’t be anything like the talent show,” Blossom assured her. “There’s no stage. All we’re going to do is sit around a table and call up a few dead people, do a few tarot readings, and then listen to a dozen or so speeches. In front of an audience and half a dozen journalists.”

“N-O.”

Blossom shrugged. “Your grandmother insists. So you can take it up with her.”

Riley’s eyes narrowed, and her nose twitched. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Her mother avoided her gaze and handed Nick the box of crystals. “Do me a favor and put these by the front door so you can take them home with you.”

“Sure,” Nick said.

“You’re a good son-in-law,” Blossom said, patting him on the cheek.

“He’s not your son-in-law, and he’s also not your pack mule,” Riley argued.

“You know that your father and I are fine if you two decide to get married legally or not. It’s a very personal decision.”

Nick left his open-mouthed girlfriend gaping at her mother and took the box to the front door.

“You did NOT just say that!” Riley screeched moments later.

He ran back into the room. “Everything all right?”

Riley had a pillow and was holding it over her face. “I’m going to kill my grandmother.” The words were muffled, but he caught them loud and clear.

He pulled the pillow away from her face, then on instinct checked to make sure she wasn’t carrying any weapons. He put an arm around her waist and felt around for any concealed weapons.

“She’s just kidding, Nick,” Blossom said, looking not entirely sure. “She just had a little shock. That’s all. How about some tea, Riley? You like tea.”

“I hate tea. I want alcohol,” Riley said, her face white.

“I’ll get the hooch,” Blossom said. “Try to get her to lay down in the TV room.”

Nick led Riley to the couch he’d personally helped move the first time he’d met the parents and pushed her down. “What’s wrong, baby? What did your mean grandma do now?”

“B-B-Bella.”

“Bella? What’s a bella?” he asked.

“G-Goodshine.”

“Channel 50 is sending their weather girl, Bella Goodshine, to cover the seance,” Blossom said, shoving a bottle into Riley’s hands before lighting up another cigarette. “Apparently she’s branching out into fluff pieces instead of just storm systems and ruining my daughter’s marriage.”

Riley took a hit from the bottle and snatched the cigarette from her mother. She took a long drag and coughed out a cloud of smoke.

Nick took the bottle from her in case it was flammable.

“Does anyone smell smoke in there?” Roger yelled from the front porch.

Blossom stole the cigarette and dunked it in a flower vase.

“No!” mother and daughter shouted together as they frantically fanned the air.

“Weird. Imma take Daisy for a walk around the block,” he bellowed back.

“I can’t just perform for a crowd, Mom,” Riley groaned.

“I know!”

“And I can’t not perform with my ex-husband’s future wife sitting there judging me.”

“I know!” Blossom wailed.

“Everybody calm down,” Nick ordered.

The Basil-Thorn women turned their gazes on him, and he held up his palms. “Before you kill me. Hear me out. What if Elanora gets her seance, but it gets interrupted?”

“By what? A swarm of locusts and a farting dog?” Riley asked.

Someone pounded on the front door. “For Pete’s sake, Roger. The door is unlocked,” Blossom snarled, whipping it open.

The skinny, nosy next-door neighbor stomped inside waving official-looking documents.

“You went too far this time, Thorns!”

Riley bounded to her feet and made Nick fear for the neighbor’s life.

“Not now, Chelsea!” Riley snarled, grabbing the woman by the shoulders and shoving her back out the door. “Go ruin some other neighbor’s life for ten fucking minutes. How about Mr. Abbott? I hear he’s going through radiation treatments. Maybe you should complain to him about the parking habits of his home health aides.”

“We have regulations for a reason,” Chelsea snipped. She had a head of blonde helmet hair and was dressed in a pink blouse and white pants.

“You violated those regulations by using too much water to keep your stupid grass green! So turn your hoity-toity tight ass around and get off my property,” Blossom shouted.

“You should probably go,” Nick advised, stepping into the terrifying territory also known as the physical space between three very upset women.

“You haven’t heard the last of me,” Chelsea howled.

“You sound like a Marvel movie villain,” Blossom shrieked, peering over Nick’s shoulder.

He slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt just in case.

Both women took several deep, cleansing breaths.

“I apologize for my outburst,” Blossom said finally after accessing some kind of internal well of Zen. “What were you saying about an interruption, Nick?”

“How about a power outage?”

“Oh, come on!” Blossom snapped, apparently having lost touch with the well of Zen. “I say this with love, but we’ll be lighting about a hundred candles. We don’t need electricity, you handsome idiot.”

“Mom,” Riley chastised.

Blossom winced. “I’m very sorry. I’m a little stressed out.”

“I understand,” Nick said. “But you know what you do need?”

Riley reached for the bottle again, and he held it out of reach.

“What? What do we need?” Blossom demanded. “Enough alcohol to drink ourselves stupid?”

“Yes, but more importantly, air conditioning.”

Riley stopped reaching for the bottle.

“A hot August night, all those people crammed inside around open flames with no air conditioning?” Nick painted them a picture.

“I take back the idiot comment,” Blossom said. “You’re a diabolical dimpled genius.”

“You’d sabotage an HVAC system for me?” Riley whispered.

“Baby, you know I would.”

“That is the sweetest, most underhanded, biggest grand gesture any man has ever made for me,” she decided.

“Are you forgetting about the time I saved your life?” he teased.

She shook her head. “No, I am not.”

“Oh, crap,” Blossom interrupted. “Nick, did I mention that my mother needs you to pick up two of her guild friends at the train station tonight?”