Tombs of Endearments (20 page)

“Who else but Joel would have the nerve to try and prove his innocence by insulting my family!” The upshot seemed clear and the nausea factor ratcheted up. I shivered. “Maybe it was some stranger. That gives me the creeps.”

“You and me both. He could have swiped the ring.”

“And since it’s a family heirloom…”

I hadn’t meant to make this sound like a bad thing, but apparently the anger I was feeling seeped into my voice. Then again, who could blame me? My apartment had just been burglarized. It was only fair that Grandma cut me some slack. Instead, she clicked her tongue.

I knew she was offended, and rightly so. I apologized automatically. “I know. It’s not something I should take lightly. I mean, the whole thing about Paris and the Nazis and—”

Grandma’s shriek of laughter stopped me cold. “Who would be stupid enough to vacation in a country that’s about to be conquered?” she asked.

My head came up. I looked at her hard. “You mean—”

“Horse hockey,” she said. “Every word of it. You’d think someone would have figured it out by now. Then again, my son was always a trusting soul. A little stupid, but trusting. And my grandson…well, I didn’t want to be the one to break it to you, but I guess by now you have it figured out. Joel was never the brightest bulb in the box. Truth is, kid, I’ve never set foot in Paris. Not in my life. And not since. What really happened is that me and Arnold, we ran off to Atlantic City together. My father would have had Arnie’s head if he knew we were in a hotel making whoopee, so we concocted the story about getting married in Paris. Back in the eighties when they started registering diamonds, we told the jeweler the same story we’d been telling our family all along. It kind of took on
a life of its own, you know? Thank goodness they didn’t have diamond registration back when Arnie bought that ring off a guy we met on the board-walk. I bet it was hot.”

I’d bet it was, too. As a way of thanking Grandma for letting me in on the secret, I grinned. “I’m glad it didn’t get stolen again this time,” I told her. This cheered me up, and I would have stayed that way if another thought didn’t hit. Curious to know if I really saw what I thought I saw when I walked into the room, I jumped up and kicked aside the clothes I’d just shoveled off my bed. I knelt on the floor to take a closer look at my spilled jewelry. “My gold chain is still here,” I told Grandma, and just to prove it, I held it up for her to see. “And the birthstone ring my parents bought me that Christmas we spent in the Bahamas.”

I didn’t hear or see Grandma move, but when I looked up again, she was on the floor, too, kneeling directly across from me. She raised her eyebrows. “Expensive?” she asked.

“Expensive enough.” I did a little more excavating. My own grandmother had once given me her gold watch. It was thick and heavy and old-fashioned-looking and I never wore it, but call me sentimental, I’d never get rid of it. Just thinking it might be gone soured my stomach.

Not to fear. The watch was there, too.

“Funny, don’t you think,” I said, but I wasn’t laughing. “Somebody took all the trouble to break in here, but nothing of any value is missing. So why bother?”

Grandma pursed her lips. “You’re talking like a detective.”

“Am I?” Thinking, I tapped my top lip with my index finger. “Maybe it’s time I starting acting like one, too.”

Grandma shivered with anticipation. “Oh, are we going to investigate?”

“I’m
going to investigate. I know this has got to have something to do with Damon and Vinnie and Mind at Large. Trouble is I can’t get close to the band anymore.”

“So what are we going to do?”

It was a legitimate question—well, except for the
we
part, but I ignored that for now because I needed someone to talk to and I didn’t want Grandma to get offended and vanish. The least I owed her for her advice about the slipper and the truth about the ring was a clear and concise answer. The kind she’d expect from a real detective. Maybe that’s why she looked at me in wonder when instead of saying anything at all, I hopped to my feet, the spark of inspiration in my eyes.

“I can’t get close the band,” I said. “But I can still get close to the next best thing.”

In a flash, Grandma was on her feet, too. She angled her head and squinted at me, just like she used to do back when she was alive and we talked about something that really interested her and she couldn’t wait to hear more. “And all this, it means what?”

I was sure I’d hit on the perfect solution, and I was so full of myself, I was already two steps ahead of her. I checked the time on the clock radio that was lying on the floor, upside down next to my nightstand. It was too late to do anything that evening and besides, I needed to wait for the cops and
fill out a report about the burglary that wasn’t. But first thing the next morning…

I was already putting my clock upright and setting the alarm for the ungodly hour of six when I remembered that I hadn’t answered Grandma.

I hit the volume button on the radio so it would go off nice and loud and I couldn’t sleep through it and glanced at her over my shoulder. “The answer is simple,” I told her. “Coffee.”

No one should get up that early. Especially on a Saturday.

No one should have to go out when it’s still dark, either, but I knew I had no choice. Not if I was going to catch Belinda before she headed out for a day of coffee and Damon-worship. It was that or miss a chance at—maybe—getting my investigation off dead center.

Because I figured there was no way I was going to run into anyone I knew (or at least anyone I knew who I cared cared about how I looked), I slipped on jeans and a black sweater and sneakers, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and left my apartment before I could convince myself that I might be wasting my time.

As it turned out, I was. When I got to her apartment, Belinda was already gone.

Time for Plan B.

Next thing I knew, I was the first one in line at the City Roast coffee stand at the West Side Market.

The market is a historic landmark in Cleveland, but truth be told, it is not my kind of place. There’s a covered walkway outside lined with stands brim
ming with fruits and vegetables. Attached to that is a massive building where I stood. In it, vendors sell everything from meat to baked goods, cheese and nuts, and ethnic specialties. Oh, I’d heard all the rah-rah from people like Ella who shopped there religiously: The prices were impossible to beat, the food was the freshest in town, the merchants were friendly and helpful and they knew their customers and their customers’ preferences. But for a girl who’s used to shopping at stores where the food is neatly packaged, the aisles are wide and roomy, and music plays from the overhead sound system, the whole place is a little overwhelming. It’s big and it’s noisy. It’s what people call colorful when they’re being politically correct and what they really mean is that on any given day, you’re just as likely to see suburban shoppers in their minks inside the market as you are the homeless right outside its doors. Of course, it’s an up-close-and-personal experience with food in its least-processed stages, too. As I stood there waiting for my latte (skim milk, no whipped cream), a butcher walked by carrying the carcass of a skinned pig.

Need I say more?

Lucky for me, I wasn’t even halfway through my latte when I saw that my instincts were right on. I wasn’t wasting my time, after all. This
was
the first stop Belinda made each morning.

“Good to see you again!” Before she could say a word, I whipped out a five and plunked it on the counter to pay for whatever she was going to order. “You remember me, right? I’m Pepper. We were at your apartment and—”

“You were with us,” she said. “When Death tried to collect our souls.” Like a bobble-head doll that had been given a good jostling, she nodded, and hoping to establish some kind of rapport, I nodded, too. I don’t think she heard me groan; I was hoping that first thing in the morning, Belinda would be a little less crazy.

Rather than show my disappointment, I smiled. “That’s right. But I also found Alistair. Remember? And I was at the recording studio. And remember what I said there? I told the guys that I talked to Vinnie. He asked for my help. But there’s nothing I can do. Gene Terry won’t let me talk to the band anymore.”

“I’m with the band!”

It wasn’t the first time she’d told me as much, and just like last time, I had a hard time pretending I cared. “I know that,” I said, hoping to divert her from memory lane. All I really wanted to talk about was the missing photo of Damon. “You knew all the guys in the band, but you liked Damon the best.”

“Liked him?” Belinda’s face scrunched with confusion. “That’s not true. I didn’t like Damon. I loved him. And he loved me, too.”

Maybe the early hour was messing with my mind. There was no way I heard her correctly. “Are you telling me that you and Damon, you—”

“Screwed our brains out, every chance we got!” Belinda’s laugh was loud enough to turn heads. It was exactly the effect her words had on my stomach. I backed up and gave her a careful look, but like I said, she was so lost in the past, I don’t think
she remembered I was there. “We fell in love. We’re still in love. He’s my—”

“Angel of death.” This part of the puzzle clunked into place. Realizing it, I sucked in a breath. “That’s why you’re always hanging around Damon’s grave. It’s why the band lets you stick with them. You and Damon—”

“We’re soul mates.” Belinda’s eyes were as dreamy as her words. “Till death do us part. Only it didn’t. That’s why I stayed when Damon passed ahead of me into the arms of Death. To take care of him. To watch over him in his grave. He’s waiting for me.” Her expression was transcendent. “When my time comes, he’ll welcome me with open arms. My demon lover. My beautiful devil. My joy. My love. My all.”

Still mumbling and grinning, Belinda took her coffee off the counter with one hand and scooped up my change with the other. Right before she walked away.

And me? I was too stunned to do much of anything but watch her go.

Which is exactly why I didn’t realize Damon had popped up beside me.

For once I didn’t jump. I was knocked for a loop by all I’d just heard. And maybe busy feeling a little envious, too.

“You and that?” Okay, it wasn’t a polite question. But who could blame me? Naturally, I figured Damon had pretty good taste. He liked me, didn’t he? So that nobody could see me talking to myself, I ducked behind the table where the sugar packets and the cup covers were stacked. “She’s just talk
ing crazy, right? I mean, she’s an obsessed fan, sure, but she can’t be serious. You and Belinda?”

“Me and…” When I poked my head around the corner, Damon looked where I was looking. Belinda had put her coffee cup down on top of a trash can so she could scratch her stomach. “Who is she?” he asked.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “She says she’s the love of your life. But I gotta tell you, I didn’t believe her from the start. I mean, really, look at her.”

Damon did. His thoughtful expression melted into recognition. “Did she say we met in Los Angeles?”

My stomach swooped. “You’re not telling me it’s true?”

He acted like it was no big deal. “Come on, Pepper, I told you. Chicks were my thing, and I guarantee you, that chick, she was just as crazy, but she was way better-looking back then.”

“Then it is true? You and Belinda, you were—” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, all that stuff about soul mates and until-death-do-us part. “You told me you loved women. You never said there was one special person in your life.”

He’d been watching Belinda, and Damon turned my way. “Special? I wouldn’t say that. She was good for a few laughs, sure, and a couple nights of really good sex, but after that…well, I guess I lost interest. She must have hooked up with one of the other guys. She was always around. But I swear, we never spent another night together.”

“So why does she think that once she dies, you’re going to be waiting to welcome her with open
arms?” Did I sound like a crazy, jealous lover? I consoled myself with the fact that I couldn’t have. I might be crazy, but I’d never be Damon’s lover. Not like Belinda had been. The thought ripped through me, and damn it, tears filled my eyes. “She says you two were soul mates,” I told Damon. “That’s why she stays here in Cleveland. To take care of your grave. She says you’re going to love her for all eternity.”

“Well, then I’m sorry.” Damon looked into my eyes when he spoke. “I’m sorry for you, Pepper, because I can see that it hurts you to think I kept a secret from you. Believe me, that’s the last thing I want to do. I’m sorry for her, too.” He glanced back toward the trash can, but Belinda had moved on. “I never promised her a thing. Once she walked out the door, I didn’t even remember her name. And she’s devoted forty years of her life to me.” He rippled like a reflection on a pond. “She’s wasted all the time she’s been given here on earth. Because of me.” His voice was muffled, but there was no mistaking the regret in it. “It’s sad. And pathetic.” Little by little, the color drained out of Damon until he looked like an old black-and-white photograph. He faded. “I never meant for it to happen. To me, it was a one-night stand. To her—”

“It’s been her whole life.” I finished the sentence for him, and it’s a good thing. When I looked to where he’d been standing, Damon was gone.

And it was just as well.

Because epiphany moments, as important as they are, aren’t necessarily meant to be shared.

And this was one I wanted to keep to myself.

I thought about Joel and Grandma Panhorst’s
ring. I thought about how all these months, I’d been struggling to pretend life could be like it had been before my dad ended up in prison and my world fell apart. I thought about Damon and the fact that as crazy as it sounded—as crazy as it was—I’d fallen in love with him.

And I realized that me and Belinda, we had a whole lot in common.

We were both hanging on to the past.

And if I wasn’t careful, it was going to destroy my future. Just like it had hers.

What all this led to, of course, was a weekend of
examining my life. This is a good thing, or so I’m told, and can lead to all sorts of wonderful revelations. Unfortunately in my case, all it left me with was the unshakable and depressing realization that my life was in desperate need of resuscitation.

Oh yeah, and me feeling sorry for myself.

I wallowed in my misery and proved it by finishing off an entire pint of chocolate ice cream (Harmony’s latest check had yet to arrive, and I couldn’t afford Ben & Jerry’s and had to settle for the cheap stuff), a bag of Oreos, and every single cannoli I bought from Corbo’s, the really good Italian bakery down the street from my apartment. And no, I won’t say how many that was.

By the time Monday rolled around, the carbs had worked their magic, and I knew what I had to do—in addition to eating nothing but salad for an entire week.

I had to stop it with the self-pity.

I had to quit being jealous of a woman who was old and crazy and of the forty-year-old affair she’d had with a man who was as off-limits as any guy
I’d ever met, and for the best of reasons, too, since he was dead.

I had to reclaim my life. Get over it. Get on with it. Get real.

With that in mind, I went through the motions of my job, and at five o’clock, I put away the research I was using to write an article for the next Garden View newsletter on Christmas traditions at the cemetery. Then I did a couple of things. Number one, I pulled out both the business card where Quinn had written his home phone number and the cocktail napkin on which Dan had scrawled his cell number. Number two, I spent a long time thinking about calling them. Both of them. If I was in search of a life, there didn’t seem a better way to prove it than by establishing a relationship with a guy who was actually breathing.

Number three…

Well, number three was that I took a good, hard look at those phone numbers, I thought about Quinn and Dan a little more, and I decided to do nothing.

Yes, I know, such wishy-washy behavior is the true sign of a wimp. But look at things from my vantage point: I couldn’t talk to either Dan or Quinn. Not without sounding as desperate as I felt. And I wasn’t about to let either one of them know that.

All was not lost, however. With the messy personal stuff taken care of (sort of), I could concentrate on my professional life.

And I wasn’t talking about that article on Christmas traditions.

I pulled out a legal pad and made a list. It was an
obsessive/compulsive sort of thing to do, and I am anything but. Still, as I had learned from working my other cases, lists help me order my thoughts. Right about then, that was exactly what I needed. More order, less oh-poor-me.

I divided the page into three columns and wrote “Damon” to the left and “Vinnie” in the middle. On the far right I scrawled “Mind at Large.” After that, things got dicey. I took a deep breath, told my brain it was time to get in gear, and in the appropriate places, I filled in the few facts I knew for certain.

“His death was an accident but maybe not an accident,” I wrote beneath Damon’s name and spoke out loud while I did. “He could have been murdered, which might explain why he’s tied to this plane and can’t leave. Photograph missing. Maybe it’s important? Or maybe it’s not missing?”

I considered the possibility and dismissed it instantly. Belinda was a lot of things, but as the shrine to Damon in her apartment proved, careless wasn’t one of them. No way had she misplaced the photo. She valued it too much.

And so did someone else.

“Someone knows something,” I said, and since I wasn’t sure where this factoid belonged, I wrote it across all three columns. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have broken into Belinda’s apartment.”

And what about the burglary at my place?

It wasn’t the first time I wondered if the two incidents were related, but this time, like all the other times, I shook my head. What did Belinda and I have in common? In a word, absolutely nothing (and yes, I know that technically that’s two words).

Or did we?

There was Damon, of course, but heck, I hadn’t told anybody that I talked to him on a regular basis. And certainly, though everybody knew Belinda was still in love with him, nobody could possibly suspect how I felt. If they did, I’d get carted away by guys in white lab coats.

Other than that, Belinda and I both hung out at Garden View a lot (for totally different reasons), we both lived nearby, we’d both been at the Rock Hall at the same time on two occasions and at the recording studio together on another day.

What any of this meant or why it was important, I didn’t know. And none of it changed the fact that both Damon and Vinnie were dead and I didn’t have a clue as to why. Or that, if Vinnie’s information was to be trusted, another Mind at Large band member was sure to follow in their ghostly footsteps. This last bit I took personally. After all, I’d been with the band when someone shot at them. I could have ended up dead, too, and I was so not ready for that.

For another fifteen minutes or so, I went on thinking and writing and muttering. Don’t get me wrong, though I say I was ordering my thoughts and making notes about my case the way any real private investigator would, I am not completely delusional (except of course on humid days when I try to convince myself that for once, my hair was not going to frizz). Even I didn’t miss the number of
coulds
and
maybes
and question marks in my list.

Sad but true, when push came to shove, the only fact I knew for sure was this: I didn’t know squat.

Groaning, I tossed my pen down on the legal pad and plunked back in my chair. Maybe (yes, another
maybe
) I just needed a break. Maybe some downtime would restart my brain. At this point in my investigation, my thoughts should have been flowing. Instead they plonked through my head in heavy boots and made a noise like—

Like the sound of the footsteps I heard outside my office door.

My head came up, and I leaned toward the door and listened closely, trying out my deductive skills and congratulating myself when I came up with three very good reasons why I shouldn’t be afraid:

1. I was the only one in the office. I knew that for sure because both Jim, our administrator, and Ella, who was always the last one out the door, had already stuck their heads in to say good night.
   
2. Ghosts didn’t make noise when they walked around, so it couldn’t have been a visitor from the Other Side.
   
3. It was too early for a burglary.
   

I know this doesn’t exactly sound logical, but think about it and it actually makes sense. What burglar in his right mind would risk coming into an office when all the lights are on and there are still cars—okay, one car—in the parking lot?

The upshot was clear. I was imagining things. Since imagining was what I was trying not to do, and sticking to the cold, hard facts was, I got back to work.

“Damon, Vinnie, Mind at Large.” One by one, I
tapped my pen against the words written on the pad. “If someone still cares enough to steal the photo of Damon, then that someone might be the same someone who had something to do with his death. Maybe.”

My brain hurt. I tossed down the pen so I could run my hands through my hair.

Which is when I heard a sound in the hallway again.

I’ve watched enough bad movies to know the last thing I should have done was get up and go to the door. But I was working without a script and was so eager to find answers, I was willing to take a chance.

“Hello!” I opened my door and stuck my head into the hallway. There was no one around. No one I could see, anyway. “Is that you, Jim? Ella?”

No one answered, and suddenly getting in my car, locking the doors, and heading for home sounded like a really good plan. With that in mind, I ducked back into my office long enough to get my purse and take out my keys. I fisted my keychain in one hand and poked the keys out from between my fingers. With my other hand, I grabbed a paperweight off my desk. It was a promotional item Ella had insisted on gifting me with after a recent cemetery conference, a Lucite half circle, flat on the bottom and rounded on top with the picture of a simpering angel statue inside it. Lucky for me, though the paperweight wasn’t big, it was plenty heavy. Weighing it in one hand, I headed for the door. I edged down the hallway, rounded the corner into the lobby area—

And ran right into Crazy Belinda.

“Holy shit! Don’t do that to me.” I clutched the paperweight to my heart and fought to catch my breath. It wasn’t until after I finally managed not to keel over that I realized Belinda didn’t look any calmer than I felt. There were bright spots of color in her cheeks, and her eyes were aflame. She was breathing hard. She craned her neck to look over my shoulder.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“Couldn’t find you. Didn’t know which office. Have to hide.” Belinda ran her tongue over her lips. “It isn’t the angel. I would wait for the angel. You know I would. I would be so happy. But angels come on shiny clouds. They don’t follow in the dark.”

“Somebody’s following you?” I looked over my shoulder, too. There was no sign of anyone in the office, and from what I could see through a nearby window, nobody out in the parking lot. “You’re sure? This is for real?”

Even though I knew I was justified, I felt guilty for even asking. Then again, that might have been because one look at Belinda, and I was reminded of everything I’d heard about her. Once upon a long time ago, she was beautiful. These days, she was nothing but a shell of her old self. Yeah, that was pretty much enough to make me feel guilty. But wait (as they say on those commercials), there was more.

For one thing, I’d spent the entire weekend being jealous of the old Belinda, a woman who no longer existed, one Damon didn’t even remember. For another…well, that was really the deal breaker. Because no matter what I thought of Belinda, who
she was now, who she used to be, or what she’d ever meant to Damon, nothing could change the fact that there was stark terror in her eyes.

No one has ever accused me of being warm and fuzzy (well, except for Joel, and only once, but that was when I was in the first throes of wedding-induced madness and looking at cake tops—could I be blamed for thinking hearts and flowers?). Be that as it may, I am not that insensitive.

I set down the paperweight. “Come on,” I said, checking the window one more time. The coast was clear. “I’ll drive you home. Then you won’t have to worry about anyone following you.”

Belinda’s knees locked. “But he’ll find me and he’ll get you, too.”

This was not the calming reassurance I needed.

A drumbeat of fear started up inside my chest. “Nobody’s going to get me. Or you,” I told her. I figured talking tough might make both of us feel better. “My car is right outside. We don’t have far to go. So if he’s following you—”

My own words brought me up short.

“He who?” I asked because asking meant I was back in logical mode, and that was better than giving in to the panic that shivered through Belinda’s voice and threatened to infect me. “Did you see the man? Do you know who he is? What he wants?”

“He’s the wolfman. He eats the hearts of innocents.”

This piece of information would have sent any normal person screaming into the night. But truth be told, I guess I’m not all that normal. Hearing this actually made me feel better. Belinda talking about werewolves was like Belinda talking about
the angel of death, and I was much better dealing with an overactive imagination and a fried brain than I was with real threats.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s get going.”

She held back, but I was persistent, younger, stronger, and a whole lot taller. When I got tired of sweet-talking and grabbed her arm, she came along with me. A few short minutes later, we were in my car. It was dark and the security light over the office door threw odd shadows, but there was no mistaking the relief that swept across Belinda’s expression when I finally locked the doors.

Her eyes glistening, she sank back into the passenger seat and didn’t say a word. At least not until we were halfway to the side gate the employees used to leave by when they worked late and the main gates were already closed. There was a fork in the road directly ahead of us. Beyond that and across a swathe of grass was one of the older sections of the cemetery. When my headlights raked the tombstones, Belinda sat bolt upright and pointed toward the windshield with one trembling finger. “He’s there! He’s waiting! Hurry, Pepper, hurry! He’s following me.”

My heart jumped, and I don’t think I can be blamed for stepping on the accelerator. I took the fork in the road on two wheels.

Fortunately, since it was already dark and there are no streetlights in Garden View to illuminate the roads that twist and turn, common sense conquered my knee-jerk fear. Whoever Belinda thought she saw among the tombstones, no way he could keep up. I let up on the gas.

“You have to tell me what’s going on, Belinda.
Why you think someone’s following you. Is anything else missing from your apartment?”

She shook her head.

“Did you see anyone hanging around, maybe outside your place?”

Another shake.

“Then where?”

“He found me. At Damon’s grave.” She fingered the collar of her denim jacket. “He walked on kitty cat feet. His hands squeezed my throat.”

“He snuck up behind you?” Was the attack real or a product of Belinda’s warped imagination? It didn’t much matter. Just thinking about a dark cemetery and a surprise attack made me shiver. “Did he say what he wanted? Or why he chose you? Did he say anything about Mind at Large?”

She shook her head again, right before she looked over her shoulder and out the back window. When she did, her mouth fell open and her eyes bulged. One look in my rearview mirror and I saw why.

There was a car on the road behind us, and it was closing in fast. Its headlights were off.

No matter. I didn’t need them to see the truth. Belinda
was
being followed. And now, whoever was after her was right behind us.