Tomb With a View (28 page)

“Holy—!” I counted them below my breath. “Six more,” I said, and I spread them out like a hand of cards to show Ella. “And all with different names on them. So Marjorie really did have a get-rich-quick scheme. I bet she was planning on using these babies little by little, and thinking that if she did, no one would ever trace them. Whatever our thief was looking for, it wasn’t these.”

“Which means . . .”

Ella had been in on all the same meetings with the FBI and the local cops that I’d taken part in, but I couldn’t blame her for thinking like a civilian. She’d never had to deal with the criminal mind before. “It means that whoever broke into Marjorie’s locker, it probably wasn’t Jack.” I didn’t need to fill her in on the details. Because of those meetings, she knew (almost) all about Jack. “If he broke into the locker, he would have taken any cards he found. He’d have to be thorough. Any loose ends might lead right back to him.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

This, I had to think about. I was relieved to think that maybe Jack wasn’t the killer after all. I mean, the thought of kissing a guy who’d just recently tossed a woman over a balcony railing was enough to make anybody shudder.

But I still didn’t have all the answers I was looking for, and not having them didn’t sit well with me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“But you’re going to find out, right? We need to get things back to normal around here, Pepper. A murder in the cemetery is bad for business. People are afraid to even come visit their loved ones. We need closure.” The look in Ella’s eyes was so hopeful, how could I possibly let her down?

 

 

I
n keeping with my promise to Ella, I did something I never, ever do except in the direst emergencies: I went into work on the weekend.

For one thing, there was that whole deal about how the detecting part of my brain worked better when I was in my own office.

For another, I wasn’t kidding when I said that the murder and the stakeout had kept us all on our toes. It’s not like I’m a cemetery whirlwind, but I do have work to do. And I was way, way behind on it all. Ella was nearly done with that fall schedule of hers, and she’d been bugging me about how many tours I had planned. It was early September. I had to get hopping.

My final reason for going into the office on Saturday should come as no surprise. Now that Scott was knee-deep in his case, we were talking on the phone, but he’d been busy, and we hadn’t been able to hang out together. Staying at home—alone—and risking the chance of Mr. Doughboy showing up at my apartment was not my idea of a good time. Even on the weekends, Garden View is fairly busy. After all, it’s never a good day to die, and most Saturdays, families come in to buy plots for their recently departed loved ones. Unlike a certain president, I was grateful for the commotion. With people coming and going, I felt safe. Since I didn’t have to worry about stalker boy, I could concentrate on my case.

That was what I was doing. Or at least it was what I was trying to do. Too bad my brain was stuck in a loop that went something like this:

Jack, Nick, Ted, Gloria, Ray, Doris.

Then it started all over again.

I was getting nowhere, and it was making me crazy. I’d brought my lunch and I’d just decided to step outside so I could sit at the picnic table behind the administration building. Maybe a little fresh air and sunshine would work wonders on my fact-clogged brain. I was headed out there, just passing the steps that led down to the basement, when I heard a noise.

I knew better than to go down there alone. But I’m not a detective for nothing. (I mean, I am since the whole Gift thing that got me into it in the first place wasn’t my choice. But even on my own and if I didn’t have this dumb Gift, I’d still be plenty curious. And have I mentioned plenty anxious to solve the case before Quinn did?)

With that in mind, I looked around for a likely weapon and grabbed the one and only thing I could find, a laser pointer Jim had recently used for a presentation to the Board of Trustees and had left out on the credenza in the reception area. If there was an assailant down there, I was ready. Maybe I couldn’t bean him with the pointer, but I could at least blind him long enough to run away.

Since it was Saturday and I wasn’t officially on the clock, I hadn’t been too worried about what to wear that day. Of course I still looked like a million bucks, but I was a million bucks in skinny jeans, an emerald green T-shirt, and sneakers. Good thing, too. Sneakers don’t make noise on steps.

I was at the bottom of those steps, holding my breath and wondering what to do next, when I saw that the door into the old locker room was opened a crack. I knew that wasn’t the way Ella and I had left it the night before. I crept closer.

And heard another noise.

It sounded like a muffled gasp, and I wondered if our burglar had caught some other employee by surprise and was holding that person hostage. Or worse. Just in case I needed it, I flicked on the laser and charged into the locker room.

If I had been a little less enthusiastic and a little more careful, I wouldn’t have interrupted Ray and Doris doing . . . well, what it was they were doing.

“Ew!” I jumped back and squeezed my eyes shut, the better to let Doris get up from Ray’s lap, where she was sitting with her legs sprawled on either side of him and her blouse unbuttoned. I heard shuffling and waited what I thought was an appropriate amount of time before I dared to open my eyes again. By that time, Doris was standing next to Ray. They were holding hands and smiling like lovestruck teenagers.

“What’s the matter, kid?” Ray asked. “You’ve never seen two people canoodling?”

“I’ve never seen . . . I never want to see . . . You’re too old for sex!” I wailed. When I shuddered, the light of the laser pointer did a jitterbug across the wall.

Doris and Ray laughed.

“Never too old,” Ray said. He slipped one arm around Doris’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “Thanks to that little blue pill you hear so much about, I’m never going to be too old.”

“And you two? . . . Together? . . . Here at the cemetery . . .” I am anything but straightlaced when it comes to sex, but I couldn’t find my voice.

My embarrassment didn’t faze Doris in the least. She smoothed her little old lady black skirt into place and carefully buttoned her blouse. “You’re not going to tell Ella, are you? She’s such a nice lady, and I love her dearly, but somehow, I don’t think she’d approve. Then again, we are volunteers. It’s not like we’re being paid and we need to be accountable for every minute we’re here.”

“Not to worry.” I congratulated myself for stringing together three coherent words and flopped down on the bench where Ray and Doris had just been—

I stood up again.

“I’m not going to tell Ella. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” I glanced around the gloomy locker room. “There’s got to be a better place for you two to . . .” I searched for the right words and decided on, “Get together. It’s depressing down here. And anybody could walk in on you.”

As if he were the teenage boy and I were the angry parent, Ray hung his head. “Well, nobody ever comes into the locker room anymore. That’s why we figured we’d be all right. Besides, we’ve never done it down here before, but we just couldn’t wait, you know?”

I did. I didn’t want to discuss it. Or think about it. Or think about thinking about it. Murder was a far more acceptable subject than old people sex. I crossed my arms over my chest. The laser pointer made a zigzag pattern against the far wall. “Hey, while you were down here, you didn’t see anything unusual, did you?”

Doris giggled. “We weren’t looking for anything. We weren’t looking at anything. Anything but each other’s eyes.”

Their sighs overlapped.

I stayed strong. “Somebody has been down here,” I told them. “And just recently, I think.” It wasn’t a warning because, really, what they did and where they did it weren’t really any of my business, but I hoped they appreciated the subtle advice. “Ella and I were down here just yesterday, and when we were, we saw that somebody else had been down here, too. We found something interesting.”

Ray’s expression sobered. He took a step in my direction. “You mean something that relates to Marjorie’s murder?”

I reminded myself that, though they weren’t on my short list, I had considered both Ray and Doris as my culprits. Maybe I’d need my laser pointer after all. I clutched it tightly in one hand. “You didn’t like her,” I said, looking at both Ray and Doris because, of course, it applied to both of them. “Ray, you hated Marjorie because she played you for a sucker. And Doris, I’ll bet you were jealous.”

She made a pish-tush sort of sound. “Marjorie was the one who was jealous of me,” she insisted. She looked at Ray, her eyes glistening with mischief. “After all, I’ve got the hot hunk of a boyfriend she always wanted. That’s why she was so mean to me all the time. She knew Ray didn’t love her. She knew he was only spending time with her because she was leading him on about the money. Yes, I was angry that she took up so much of Ray’s time. But as you can see, Ray and I have worked that out, and I came out the winner.”

“But the day Marjorie was killed, you were both in the cemetery, and when I saw you that morning before I headed over to the memorial, you both looked a little guilty and a little flustered. Because . . .” If I wasn’t supposed to be a professional detective, I would have slapped my forehead. “I saw the two of you coming out of the copy room. You were doing . . .” I made a funny little waving gesture toward the bench. It was better than actually saying the words. “You were doing up there what you were just doing down here.”

“Not exactly,” Ray corrected me. “The copy room . . . that’s too public. You know, too much of a risk. But we were getting a few smooches in.” He grinned at Doris. “Right, honeybun?”

Doris hurried forward to put a hand on my shoulder to console me. “So you see, Pepper, we couldn’t have killed Marjorie. I’m sorry to disappoint you.” I’ve got to say, I had to love a woman who apologized for not being a murderer. “I know you’d like to get to the bottom of the mystery, but it couldn’t have possibly been either me or Ray. We were busy. You know, together.”

Now that we’d cleared all that up, there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Doris was still twinkling like a prom queen, but Ray must have suddenly realized just how awkward the situation was. He shifted from foot to foot. “You think we should all go upstairs together? You know, so we don’t look too suspicious?”

“That’s probably a good idea. That way, if anybody asks, we can tell them we were down here checking on the envelope supply or something. Only, Ray . . .” Honest, I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. I touched the light of the laser pointer ever so briefly to Ray’s fly. “You might want to zip your pants first.”

T
hat was enough excitement for one day. All the rest of that Saturday, I kept my head down and my nose to the grindstone, for once concentrating on cemetery business because when I even did so much as let my brain tippy-toe toward my case . . .

That image burned in my brain, the one of Ray and Doris together? That was just too freakin’ creepy for words.

Doing my best to keep the memories to a minimum, I checked and rechecked my fall tour schedule and got all the information typed up and put on Ella’s desk so she’d find it first thing Monday morning when she came in. While I was at it, I remembered that she’d been bugging me about writing an article for the Garden View employee newsletter about what it was like to be the one-and-only full-time tour guide in so famous a place. I, predictably, had been stalling. Not to mention dodging and overlooking. Desperate to keep busy, I pulled out all the stops and worked on the article, too, and though it was mostly a lot of hooey about what an honor it was to spend my days among the famous and the dead, I knew it would thrill Ella no end. Not to mention get her off my back.

By the time I had finished everything, locked up my office, and stepped out in the hallway, I realized it was after five and that even Jennine was gone for the day. It was quiet in the administration building. Too quiet. Sure, there were federal agents staked out all around the president’s memorial waiting to waylay Jack if he showed, but that didn’t do me a whole bunch of good. It was time for me to head home and lock myself in the safety of my apartment.

I would have done it, too, if I hadn’t heard another noise from down in the basement.

Believe me, I’d learned my lesson. Even before I started down the steps, I knew I wasn’t going to look. All I wanted to do was remind Doris and Ray to lock up when they were done doing what they were doing.

With that in mind, I paused outside the door to the locker room. I heard no grunting. No sighing. No huffing and puffing. Since that was what I was expecting, I dared to take the smallest of peeks. Good thing I had those sneakers on and hadn’t made any noise coming down the steps. I saw Jack McArthur looking through Marjorie’s locker long before he saw me.

The feds had already come to get the credit cards Ella and I found the day before, but hey, when the moment is right, I’m all about drama. I reached into my purse and pulled out a few of my own credit cards, just so I could wave them in the air when I sauntered into the room and said, “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Jack must have had nerves of steel; he never flinched. But then, I guess a criminal mastermind is made of sterner stuff than ordinary people.

His gaze flickered from me to the cards in my hand. “Where did you find those?”

“Oh, come on!” I made sure I smiled. Like it was funny. Like being alone with him didn’t scare me and like I hadn’t taken the time as I stood there outside the door to call the feds over at the memorial. Hey, I’m not a complete moron!

Just like they asked me to, I did my best to stall Jack. The way to do that, I knew, was to keep him talking. “You know exactly where the cards were. No, wait! You didn’t know where they were, did you? That’s why you’ve been looking for them. First in Marjorie’s house. Now here in her locker. It was the locker,” I said, like it was a no-brainer, and slipped the cards into my pocket before he could get too close a look at them and realize they weren’t part of his phony-baloney stash. “Too bad I got to them first.”