“B and E?” I whispered.

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t take anything,” Jagger said as he placed something in the lock and fiddled with it. In a few moments it popped open, he turned the handle, looked over my shoulder and waved me through the open door.

Talk about eerie. I felt as if Pansy and Payne were standing in the hallway looking at us.

Something touched my face! I started to scream but found a gloved hand over my mouth. I swung around and found Jagger looking me in the eye. “Cobweb,” he whispered. “And no great surprise,” he added as he shined his flashlight across the foyer.

It looked like something out of The Munsters. Dark, dank, and medieval in appearance, the place looked like a Tudor house, all right-only one that was centuries old and not cleaned since the day it was built.

“Geez,” I mumbled after Jagger took his hand away.

“I’ll say. But not surprising.”

I was surprised, I thought as we made our way into the living room-which was as colorful as Payne’s office, including fifties décor. “I love that old television,” I said, looking at a pine-console TV that had to be very old. “These two were really nuts. His office taste, yet her living room. Let’s go see the kitchen.”

No wonder we’d all come in a different way for Pansy’s after-memorial-service gig.

I followed Jagger down a dark hallway to a swinging door. He held it open so it wouldn’t swing back and smack me in the face (or maybe so it wouldn’t swing back and make any noise) and I walked in. “Wow.”

The kitchen looked like Mother Goose had decorated it. Country/nursery rhyme was an understatement. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling. Braided rugs covered the hardwood floors and dried flowers hung from every nook and cranny possible. And if I had a nickel for every duck, goose and chicken in the room, I could quit my job.

We could only shake our heads. How sweet! Simultaneous head shaking.

Usually we’d get right down to the business of snooping, but both of us had our curiosities so piqued that we made a tour of this “fun house” before starting.

The bathrooms were decorated like the ocean, complete with real water inside the windows, which bubbled constantly (I felt a bit seasick). Upstairs, the master bedroom was done in monochromatic black and red this time. If it weren’t for the rest of the house, I would have thought Pansy had no imagination until Jagger opened the door to a spare bedroom.

Junglemania.

The entire room was done in animal prints, including a bear rug. I could only whisper, “Goldie would kill for this place,” and then caught myself. “Oops. Bad choice of words.”

“Yeah,” Jagger said, but I noticed he was as intrigued with the place as I was and nearly speechless too. A real rarity. “We need to get going,” he warned once he obviously came to his senses.

I followed him down to the living room, where he motioned for me to start looking on one side of the room. “Gloves on?”

I curled my lips at him and held my gloved hands up, wiggled my fingers and started to put all of them down except the middle one-then caught myself and made a fist instead.

“Good girl, Sherlock.”

I smiled despite myself and started to open drawers-not even sure what the hell I was looking for-but knowing I’d realize it when I saw it.

After several minutes of snooping, we came up cold and headed to the other rooms. Despite the very interesting objects we’d found, including a horse’s bridle and whip in her bedroom-neither of us wanted to go there-and scented soaps in male fragrances in the bathroom, we ended up in the hot African-style spare bedroom. And hot it was.

My face burned each time Jagger or I discovered some sexual device. That was what I termed everything we found. H…O…T.

Pansy was no wallflower. That was for sure.

Jagger stood in the center of the sexual jungle while I tried not to blush. He shook his head, which looked like a pissed expression in my book. Maybe he was embarrassed with all the “toys” we’d found.

Then again, this was Jagger.

If anyone would come out of this embarrassed, it would be me.

I started to walk toward him and tripped over a “toy” on the floor. No way was I even going to imagine how that thing worked. However, on the way to falling, I reached out and grabbed onto a handle on the wall.

A vine-covered, fur-covered (black leopard, I assumed) swing came out of the ceiling and smacked Jagger right in the back.

“Oh!” I shouted, steadying myself.

“Damn it,” Jagger mumbled, pushed the swing to the side and went to the wall where he jiggled with the handle until the thing disappeared back into the ceiling like some snake retreating into a hole.

I could merely stand there and watch, amazed that Jagger could work the damn thing, along with amazed at what Pansy did on the thing.

Jagger motioned for me to follow him, so I figured our search here had been futile-and we weren’t going to play Tarzan and Jane.

On the way out, the lounge chair (which was what I was calling it although tiger stripes and vibration did not exactly say La-Z-Boy) caught my eye.

It did look rather comfortable, yet there were no arms to it. One could easily straddle…Whoops. Better not go there.

For some reason, I walked toward it though, pressed the on button and stepped back.

The top flew open, revealing a stack of papers.

I looked at Jagger.

Jagger looked back at me.

And the papers sat there begging to be read.

Fourteen

It seemed like hours passed while Jagger and I stared at each other and then at the papers sitting inside the sex chair, which is what I now called it in my mind. Had to be, I thought, looking around this room.

Apparently Jagger pulled his thoughts to the present sooner than I; he stepped forward and knelt near the chair.

Whoa.

Be still my heart and hormones.

I swallowed, mentally chastised myself, relived kissing ER Dano for a few nanoseconds (reminding myself we had a date, a real date, in two days) and bent down next to Jagger. My joints would kill me if I stayed this way too long, so I joined him on the floor, totally ignoring how our shoulders touched or our knees brushed each other’s. Totally.

Although I had these sensual feelings being so near a hot guy, I told myself that Jagger and I were really only coworkers. Right now, ER Dano was a front-runner.

“Anything?” I whispered.

He seemed engrossed in a paper that he’d taken off the top of the pile. It appeared as if it had been thrown into the chair without being tucked inside one of the many folders.

“TLC carried dead bodies,” Jagger said.

I raised my eyebrows. Probably looking like a curious kid, I said, “They can’t. They can’t carry dead bodies.”

Jagger looked at me. Was that an “are you stupid” kinda look? I studied him a few seconds to make up my mind, but he saved me the time when he said, “You’re absolutely right, Sherlock, but look at this.” He held out the paper toward me.

Thankful it wasn’t an insulting look, I shined my flashlight onto the paper. “Oh, my goodness. They carried dead bodies.”

“Many times.”

I looked at Jagger. “Why would an undertaker call an ambulance instead of transporting the dead body themselves?”

Jagger gave me a kinda “psychiatrist” look. That was a look that said, “What do you think?” much like a shrink would do to get the patient to talk on and on until they cured themselves.

I paused to think. Why the hell…

“Well,” I said, “if they were too busy. That’s it! They must have had calls simultaneously, and if TLC didn’t get their bodies for them, they’d lose that customer to a competitor. There are only three funeral homes in Hope Valley, so the competition is pretty fierce.” I sat back on my heels and noticed Jagger smile in the dim lighting.