A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) by Christopher Moore Page A

will pass.” Which he said because everyone had been saying it to him. As far as he knew, he was just slinging bullshit clichés.
    “She was—” Mainheart’s voice caught on the edge of a sob. A strong man, at once overcome by his grief and embarrassed that he was showing it.
    “I know,” Charlie said, thinking about how Rachel still occupied that place in his heart, and when he turned in the kitchen to say something to her, and she wasn’t there, it took his breath.
    “She was—”
    “I know,” Charlie interrupted, trying to give the old man a pass, because he knew what Mainheart was feeling. She was meaning and order and light, and now that she’s gone, chaos falls like a dark leaden cloud .
    “She was so phenomenally stupid.”
    “What?” Charlie looked up so quickly he heard a vertebra pop in his neck. Hadn’t seen that coming.
    “The dumb broad ate silica gel,” Mainheart said, irritated as well as agonized.
    “What?” Charlie was shaking his head, as if trying to rattle something loose.
    “Silica gel.”
    “What?”
    “Silica gel! Silica gel! Silica gel, you idiot!”
    Charlie felt as if he should shout the name of some arcane stuff back at him: Well, symethicone! Symethicone! Symethicone, you butt-nugget! Instead he said, “The stuff fake breasts are made of? She ate that?” The image of a well-dressed older woman macking on a goopish spoonful of artificial boob spooge was running across the lobes of his brain like a stuttering nightmare.
    Mainheart pushed himself to his feet on the vanity. “No, the little packets of stuff they pack in with electronic equipment and cameras.”
    “The ‘Do Not Eat’ stuff?”
    “Exactly.”
    “But it says right on the packet—she ate that?”
    “Yes. The furrier put packets of it in with her furs when he installed that cabinet.” Mainheart pointed.
    Charlie turned, and behind the large closet door where they had entered was a lighted glass cabinet—inside hung a dozen or so fur coats. The cabinet probably had its own air-conditioning unit to control the humidity, but that wasn’t what Charlie was noticing. Even under the recessed fluorescent light inside the cabinet, one of the coats was clearly glowing red and pulsating. He turned back to Mainheart slowly, trying not to overreact, not sure, in fact, what would constitute an overreaction in this case, so he tried to sound calm, but not willing to take any shit.
    “Mr. Mainheart, I appreciate your loss, but is there something more going on here than you’ve told me?”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”
    “I mean,” Charlie said, “why, of all the used-clothing dealers in the Bay Area, did you decide to call me? There are people who are much more qualified to deal with a collection of this size and quality.” Charlie stormed over to the fur cabinet and pulled open the door. It made a floof-tha sound that the seal on a refrigerator door makes when opened. He grabbed the glowing jacket—fox fur, it appeared to be. “Or was it this? Did the call have something to do with this?” Charlie brandished the jacket like he was holding a murder weapon before the accused. In short, he thought about adding, are you fucking with me?
    “You were the first used-clothing dealer in the phone book.”
    Charlie let the jacket drop. “Asher’s Secondhand?”
    “Starts with an A, ” Mainheart said, slowly, carefully—obviously resisting the urge to call Charlie an idiot again.
    “So it has nothing to do with this jacket?”
    “Well, it has something to do with that jacket. I’d like you to take it away with all the rest of it.”
    “Oh,” Charlie said, trying to recover. “Mr. Mainheart, I appreciate the call, and this is certainly a beautiful collection, amazing, really, but I’m not equipped to take on this kind of inventory. And I’ll be honest with you, even though my father would be spinning in his grave for telling you this, there is probably a million dollars’ worth of