She pondered the question for a moment. “Obviously the security company has access to it—through their system, I would think—but other than that, I’m not sure,” she said. “I did have a repairman in last week though.” She considered that for a moment and shuddered. “I didn’t honestly think very much about it.”
“Do you know what company it was?”
“Not offhand, but I do have an invoice,” she said, walking to the back.
He followed behind, stopped at the threshold to her small back room, her workshop so to speak, and studied the surroundings.
“I’m not sure what you’re looking for,” she said, as she glanced up from her paperwork, “but I really don’t do much of the work here.”
At that, his gaze zinged back toward her. “Are you the one who actually does the preserving?”
“I work with a mortician.” She stopped and said, “Look. Just in case you didn’t know this, I’m also a licensed mortician myself. It’s just not the field I prefer to work in. My family owns a funeral home, and, once I started doing this preservation work, it became my passion. I don’t do anything else at the funeral home unless, … unless I get called in because they’re really short-handed, but it’s not my preferred line of work.”
“Yet you went into it as a career.”
She gave him a ghost of a smile. “For a lot of reasons that I won’t bore you with,” she said, “but I will state that there can be an awful lot of family pressure sometimes.”
His lips twitched at that. “I’ll give you that. I can’t imagine, particularly in this field, that bucking the family business would be easy.”
“Well, this field isn’t any different than any other, and, no matter the career, there’s always been that expectation to take over the family industry.”
“And what about your sister?”
“My sister did take over the family industry,” Tasmin confirmed, with half a smile. “My parents have no sons, which is where the expectation would hopefully land. As such, my father still works there with Lorelei, and my mother runs the storefront and the office work side of it.”
“And you’re the one who walked away?”
“I’m the one who walked away,” she said, with a slightly darker tone.
“Any problems over that?”
She pondered that question before answering. “I’m sure my family felt a degree of disappointment, even some aggravation, but this was something I needed to do.”
“And how do they feel about your chosen field now?”
“Well, one is disgusted by it, and the other understands—or at least she says she does. Then there is my father. He won’t step foot in my store. He is extremely religious, and, in his mind, when a body is dead and gone, it’s dead and gone and meant to be returned to the ground,” she said quietly. “To him, my preservation business is on the edge of sacrilegious.”
He studied her for a moment in surprise.
She shrugged. “There’s just no understanding sometimes, even among family members.”
“No, I imagine there isn’t. I guess I’m wondering if anybody here in your world would actively be trying to set you up.”
She stared at him in surprise and then immediately shook her head. “I can’t imagine why, or who, but just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it can’t exist as a possibility,” she said. “It would be extremely disappointing if that’s what happened, but … I suppose it’s possible.”
She was quiet for a moment. “There was some outcry when an article was done on my business last year, yet an awful lot of people were fascinated by the process, and some were just curious. I did refuse any and all follow-up interviews, mostly because I didn’t have time and just didn’t want to fuel the fire and deal with the fallout again.”
“What kind of fallout was it, and who did the interview?”
“It was just the local paper, but the online version went viral, so it kicked up quite a fuss,” she muttered.
“And I presume it wasn’t in a good way.”
“Well, I’m not sure there is a good way when it comes to a fuss of that nature. Most people would say that any publicity is good publicity, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not quite true.”
He nodded. “Particularly in something so controversial.”
“Exactly, but I’m also an artist, so a part of me really understands why somebody would want to keep their ink forever.”
“Sure,” the cop agreed. “I guess I can understand why the actual owner might want his ink to last forever, but why would somebody other than the person who was wearing it want someone else’s ink to last forever?”
At that, she smiled up at him. “Because a lot of people do even weirder things when it comes to losing their loved ones,” she said. “There are people and stories that would make your skin crawl about what people are willing to do to preserve a part of their loved ones,” she said. “We get all kinds of requests.”
“Such as?”
She stared at him for a moment. “As long as you aren’t going to ask for names or details, I can tell you that we’ve had people requesting that body ornaments be removed or wanted special things added to body ornaments. One woman wanted a special note added to her husband’s cock ring. Another gentleman, who absolutely loved his wife’s ears, wanted the ear lobes taken off and preserved, so he could have them for himself. Really no way to know how people feel about various aspects of their personal relationships.”
He stared at her in shock.
She shrugged. “Nothing stranger in fiction than the actual truth itself.”
“Yeah, and who said that, some famous poet or something?” he asked, with a note of disgust in his voice.
“No,” she said. “It was me. And, as an artist, I understand and would like to have things I create survive beyond my life, as a gift to humanity, if anybody saw it that way. But I paint on canvas, not skin, and I paint for the ages. I don’t paint for today.” She could tell that he didn’t quite understand that.
He gave her a headshake. “I guess there’s no figuring out humans, is there?”
“No, there sure isn’t,” she said succinctly.
“Why did you leave the funeral home industry?” he asked, his tone piercing and more abrupt than before.
She glared at him. “It has nothing to do with this.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’m curious, and, if it’s related, I need to know.”
“I just said it’s not related.”
“But it’s you, and something is going on here that I don’t quite understand, so I’m not exactly sure I believe you.”
She shrugged. “You’re a cop. I’m sure you’ve checked the files, but I don’t know if you’ve run my name,” she murmured. “If you do, I’m sure you’ll have all the answers you want.”
His eyebrows rose ever-so-slowly, as he stared at her. “And you’d rather I go check it out for myself first.”
“Absolutely, and preferably not come back,” she said, her tone harsher than she intended.