Dead Man Talking (6 page)

“And who knows what happened to you in Chicago.” Quinn paused here, giving me a chance—again—to explain everything that had happened the winter before. Just like he’d given me plenty of other chances, plenty of other times. Like I could? Where would I even begin?

Disgusted, he folded his arms over his chipped-from-granite chest. “You’ve told me there was a crazy doctor and a bunch of missing homeless people in Chicago. You said you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn’t begin to explain everything that happened, and in case I need to remind you, you got shot, Pepper. And you nearly died.”

“This Lamar thing is nothing like that.” I turned my back on him when I said this, the better to keep him from seeing the look in my eyes that said I hoped my investigation into Lamar’s life wouldn’t end up being as complicated. Or as bloody. “It’s just that Jefferson Lamar, he’s buried at Monroe Street. In the section we’re going to be restoring. I thought . . .” Honestly, I hadn’t thought anything. Not about this case, anyway. Not until that very moment. Then, like magic, a plan formed in my head. When I turned back to Quinn, even I was surprised at how smoothly I could tell a fib.

“It’s for the competition,” I said. I scooted back to the couch and sat down again. “Each team has to find out the most about the famous people buried in the section it’s working on. Team One has all these old early settlers buried in their section. It’s going to be a cinch for them, seeing as half of them are probably related to the early settlers and they probably have their portraits hanging in their ballrooms. So far, Lamar is the only person in our section who’s got any sort of interesting background. Like I said, he was a prison warden. And then someone framed him for murder.”

“Framed? What makes you think that?”

Have I mentioned that Quinn doesn’t know I talk to the dead? I mean, honestly, could I tell him? Ever? So far, I’d been pretty good at throwing him off the ghostly scent, mostly because of that whole bit about us never really getting too close to each other. In a purely non-physical way, of course.

I wasn’t about to blow it now.

“I found out a little bit about Lamar from his cemetery files,” I said, lying again for all I was worth. “There was a notation in it. The information must have come from someone who knew him well. This note in his
file, it said that even when he was arrested and convicted, he still said he was innocent. He said he’d been framed, but he didn’t know who did it, so he could never prove it.”

“It certainly is interesting.” I could tell he hated to admit it. “But, hey . . .” Quinn put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “You know plenty already. You can put that stuff about how he might have been framed in your report. That will help with the competition, right?”

“I could . . . It might . . .” Another thing I might not have mentioned is that I can be just as devious as Quinn. Since I was already sitting next to him, I figured I might as well take advantage of the situation. I tickled my fingers over his thigh. “But I was thinking it might be even better if I could get my hands on some of the original information. You know, like the police files.”

“From back in the eighties?” He was about to drop the whole idea, and I knew it. That’s why I tickled a little more, a little higher. Quinn sucked in a breath.

I moved a little closer. “Those files, they must be somewhere, right? A storage facility? Or maybe they’ve all been put on microfiche or something. You know, like they do with old newspapers at the library. But the information has to exist. It isn’t all that long ago.”

“No, but . . .” Quinn was done playing games. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and yanked me closer. His eyes locked with mine and his mouth was only a fraction of an inch away when he asked, “If I get you that file, what do I get in return?”

“What do you want in return?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take, but I knew one thing for sure: Quinn Harrison is a man of his
word. I was going to get that file. And a little something extra, in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

T
he way I remember it, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Maybe that’s why the next morning, I wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got to Monroe Street.

I had decided to make Jefferson Lamar’s gravesite our unofficial headquarters. Pretty smart, huh? Something told me I’d be spending a lot of time there, anyway, and this saved me the trip back and forth. With that in mind, I stopped at the tent/office and collected everything I figured we were going to need for the day and sent my team on ahead. When I found them, Sammi was sitting on a low headstone polishing her nails a garish orange that didn’t match her red shorts or the purple T-shirt emblazoned with the picture of some saint. His halo sparkled in the sunlight. Reggie and Delmar each had a shovel, and though they were supposed to wait for further instruction, they’d already started poking around. There were a couple divots of dry earth and brown grass sitting on top of Lamar’s gravestone.

Crazy Jake ignored me completely. Then again, he was a little busy talking to himself while he snapped shot after shot with one of those cardboard disposable cameras.

Absalom was—

I stopped in my tracks and stared. Absalom was standing in front of a headstone nearly as tall as him. It was a solid piece of granite shaped into a hulking rectangle. There was a foot-high figure on top of it made from wire and white fabric. It had a head of fuzzy hair
that looked like cotton candy. The figure was wearing beads that reminded me of Ella’s. Absalom was pouring it a glass of rum.

“Is . . . that . . . I mean . . . Did you . . . ?” Yes, I stammered. It is so unlike me, but remember, I hadn’t gotten my beauty sleep (though I had gotten a whole lot more). I choked back my surprise and pointed a finger at the thing. “Is that a voodoo doll?”

“You want to make something of it?” Absalom’s voice was a lot like Absalom himself, big and heavy, so no, I didn’t want to make something of it. Instead, I watched as he lit a candle in a yellow votive glass and placed it in front of the doll.

The way I figured it, it was as good a time as any to get down to business.

“OK, people!” I sounded as perky as a phys ed teacher and reminded myself that was not like me, either. It certainly wasn’t the image I wanted to portray, for my team or for the TV cameras. Before Greer showed her gnomey little face, I knew I had to get my act together.

I found a right-height tombstone that was nice and flat, and sat down on it. “We need to come up with a plan,” I said.

Sammi rolled her eyes.

Delmar and Reggie kept digging.

Crazy Jake put his camera three inches from my nose and snapped.

When the light show stopped flashing in my eyes and I could almost see again, I realized Absalom was standing right in front of me, his massive arms folded over his even more massive chest. “You’re not serious, are you?” he asked.

I guess there was something about that booming voice of his (not to mention the whole menacing presence thing) that made his fellow teammates sit up and
take notice. One by one, they drifted closer, and suddenly, I was surrounded. There wasn’t room for me to stand, not without getting too close to Crazy Jake. With no choice, I kept my seat and looked up at the felons . . . er . . . parolees (or was it probationers?) around me.

“Look, I could throw you a line of bull,” I told them. “But something tells me you’ve all been lied to before, so I’m just going to lay this on the line. You don’t want to be here? Well, I don’t want to be here, either.”

I was trying to be flexible, so I ignored it when Sammie mumbled a curse. I continued.

“None of us have any choice. I’m here because my boss says I have to be here. You’re here . . .” With Reggie glaring, Absalom staring, and Sammi sneering, this did not seem to be the time to bring up their criminal pasts.

“I’ve never done a cemetery restoration before,” I said instead, and big points for me for being so honest. “So I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work. I do know that those TV cameras will be over here in a little while, and when they are, we should at least try to look like we know what we’re doing.”

“Won’t make no difference.” Delmar scuffed the toe of one sneaker against the bare ground. “You know what’s gonna happen. That TV show is going to make us look like losers. That producer . . .” He gave the word an acid twist, and I decided right then and there that Delmar was a good judge of character. “She’s gonna make those rich ladies look better than us. No matter what we do.”

“Then I guess we’re going to have to do what we do so well, she won’t be able to do that.”

It was a convoluted answer on my part, and to cover up my inadequacies and try and look in control, I stood. None of my teammates gave an inch. In fact, Reggie took a step closer, his eyes narrowed. Crazy Jake stuck the camera under my nose. “I’m taking pictures,” he
said. Lucky for my retinas, he didn’t demonstrate. “Then we’ll know what it looked like. You know, before and after.”

This struck me as a very uncrazy idea. I told Jake to run with it. With him busy and out of the way, I handed out the listing of burials that had been included in the mountain of files Ella had delivered in those tote bags the day before, along with the hand-drawn maps of our section that some volunteer had taken the time to prepare. “Jake’s right,” I said, and for my efforts, I got a creepy kind of smile from him before he snapped another picture of me. “We can’t start to change things until we know what’s here. So let’s each take a portion of our section and compare the headstones and names to what’s on this map.”

Without bothering to take one of the papers I offered, Absalom went back to his voodoo altar.

Reggie and Delmar picked up their shovels.

Sammi snatched one of the maps out of my hand and gave me a snappy, “Whatever,” before she walked away.

“What have you found out?”

Have I mentioned that ghosts don’t show up in real life the way they do on TV or in the movies? I mean, ghosts on TV, when they pop up, there’s usually some sort of spooky music playing. But the truth is, there’s nothing that signals their arrival. One second they’re not there, the next second they are.

One second I was all alone watching my teammates skulk away.

The next second, Jefferson Lamar was standing at my side.

I controlled my little shriek of surprise, and just so nobody thought I was as crazy as Jake, I moved away from his grave. There was nobody around near that dilapidated
mausoleum, so I went over there, and I didn’t say a word until I knew I couldn’t be overheard.

“You haven’t exactly given me a lot of time,” I told him.

“You had all night. What were you doing?”

Honestly, did he expect me to answer that?

“These things take time,” I told him. “Your case is more than twenty years old.”

“But you could have gone to the library and read the old newspaper articles,” he said, and I made a mental note of it. It was what a real private investigator would do. “You could have checked out the scene of the crime.”

Another mental note. “I’m going to do all that,” I said, my conscience clear now that he’d made the suggestions and I thought they were good enough to actually follow. “But I’ve got this day job, see, and the TV station is here filming, and—”

I didn’t have a chance to explain the rest of my complicated life to Jefferson Lamar. I mean, how could I when I heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight?

4

B
y the time I got there, Absalom, Crazy Jake, and Sammi were standing in a circle, watching Reggie and Delmar go at each other. They were down on the ground, rolling in the dirt, and Reggie had Delmar in a headlock. That wasn’t enough to stop the kid. His teeth were close enough to Reggie’s arm to do some damage, and he took full advantage—and a huge chomp. Reggie screamed and swore a blue streak, and when he loosened his hold, Delmar rolled and kicked.

Crazy Jake jumped out of the way just in time to avoid serious injury, but Delmar’s kung fu-fighter impression wasn’t wasted. He caught Reggie in the jaw with one beat-up Reebok, and Reggie’s head snapped back. He wasn’t down for the count, though.

His eyes narrowed and fiery, his breaths straining, Reggie lunged, and when he did, he looked a whole lot like that pit bull on his forehead. Growling, he grabbed
Delmar’s ankle and twisted. Delmar grunted, rolled, and kicked again.

And I knew if I didn’t do something quick, somebody was really going to get hurt—and the whole crazy mess just might get caught on camera.

“Stop! Right now!” I sounded like a desperate kindergarten teacher and, honestly, that’s exactly how I felt. I raced over, and because she wasn’t about to give an inch, I had to nudge Sammi aside to get close. Since I’m about twice her size and she wasn’t expecting it, my push knocked her off her feet. The last I saw of her, she was butt down in a patch of weeds.

Sammi was less than happy, even after I mumbled a hurried, “Sorry.” Her curses were just as loud and colorful as Reggie’s.

And I so didn’t care.

It wasn’t until I was right on top of where they were still tussling in the dirt that I saw Delmar had something pressed to his chest.

The something in question was a dirt-coated box. It was about half the size of a piece of computer paper and made of wood. I have a degree in art history, but believe me, that doesn’t make me an expert in things old and moldy. Even so, I could tell the box had been buried a long time.

I could also see where it came from—there was a hole right next to Jefferson Lamar’s headstone.

Automatically, my interest level ratcheted up a notch. Reggie and Delmar’s beef was small potatoes compared with the too-obvious fact that the box buried near Lamar’s grave might have something to do with him—and with his claim that he’d been framed for a murder he didn’t commit. I may have been taking my life in my own hands, but hey, I had a job to do.