The Spare Key Fits the Morgue

How it begins

My sister's spare key arrived in a padded envelope without her sister attached.

She had been missing for nine months.

I knew the key because I had cut it badly. A little flat on the fourth tooth. Tess had complained that I saved my best work for people who paid.

There was nothing else in the envelope.

I locked the shop, put the key on a blue ribbon and drove to the only building in town that used that particular blank.

The mortuary had changed its sign since I had repaired the back door. It now promised peaceful transitions in silver lettering.

Inside, a man was watering a plastic plant.

"Leonie," he said. "I wondered when you'd come."

I had never met him.

He set down the watering can before I could ask about it.

"Leaks overhead. Easier than explaining."

He gave me a visitor's badge and led me past a row of closed consultation rooms. The ribbon felt childish in my fist. Tess had chosen it years ago so I would stop losing things.

At the cold-room door, the man waited.

"I haven't said what I want."

"No," he said. "You haven't."

The key turned without resistance.

I had repaired that lock too, although I remembered a different door around it. Blue paint. A loading bay. Someone had moved the whole fitting.

The man pulled out the third drawer.

A stranger lay inside. Late fifties, perhaps. Carefully combed hair. A small white card rested in the clear bag beside his hand.

I read the appointment time first.

Tomorrow. Ten thirty.

Then I read the name.

Leonie Voss.

The man beside me took out a paper diary.

"Before you say anything, that's not the first time."

I looked back at the lock.

There were fresh scratches around the keyhole. Someone had tried the wrong key, repeatedly, before finding the right one.

My sister had never forced a lock in her life.

She had always known which door would open.