The Gravedigger's Ball

by Solomon Jones

  “Okay, let’s say your theory is true,” Coletti said, his tone skeptical. “What, besides that poem, makes you think a woman named Lenore is the key to all this?”

  Workman went back to the book, flipping through it as he spoke. “Lenore appears in several of Poe’s works, including a poem called ‘Lenore.’ There, Poe wrote that Lenore was young, beautiful, and rich, and that the friends who claimed to love her really didn’t. In ‘The Raven,’ he wrote about Lenore again, only this time, there was a hidden message.”

  “So you’re saying Lenore Wilkinson knows where this message is?”

  “I’m saying that if such a message exists, Clarissa apparently believed that Mrs. Wilkinson was the only one who could find it.”

  “Suppose, just for argument’s sake, Clarissa had already come across a clue that could help Lenore find this message. Would you be able to interpret it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Coletti pulled out the picture of the cryptogram. “Clarissa had this tattooed on her neck a few days before meeting Lenore. Call me crazy, but she didn’t seem like the tattoo type, which makes me think it’s connected to finding Poe’s message.”

  Workman looked at the picture, and the color drained from his face. He seemed to want to say something, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  Coletti saw him struggling to find an acceptable version of the truth, so he decided to help him along. “You’ve seen this cryptogram before, haven’t you?”

  Workman got up and ran his hands through his sparse hair. Looking through the window at the students on the brick walkway outside, he spoke quietly. “Yes, I’ve seen it before. Supposedly it’s an old cryptogram that Poe himself couldn’t solve. I showed it to Clarissa and the others on a lark.”

  “Why do you think she had it tattooed on herself?” Coletti asked.

  Workman left the window, sat back down on the couch, and smiled sadly. “Sometimes people get lost in things so they don’t have to deal with their reality. With her marriage falling apart the way it was, maybe this thing with Poe became Clarissa’s way to escape.”

  “It was more than an escape. She was so excited about Lenore’s visit that she sent you an e-mail about it.”

  “Actually, she sent it to the manager of the cemetery,” Workman said. “I was just copied on it. But clearly Clarissa was excited about Lenore’s visit. I was excited, too.”

  “But not excited enough to be there to see if Lenore was the key to your theory,” Coletti said, his eyes boring into him.

  “I had departmental meetings this morning. I was planning to catch up with them later.”

  “Were you really?” Coletti asked cynically. “Professor, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Clarissa believed in this stuff more than you do. I mean, for an academic of your stature to have a chance to see his theory proved is the opportunity of a lifetime. But you’re telling me you missed it for a staff meeting.”

  “What I’m telling you is I was going to meet Clarissa and Lenore later,” Workman said, sounding irritated.

  “Or maybe you were there at the graveyard this morning,” Coletti said accusingly, “in which case you’ll either need to get a lawyer or get a few people to vouch for your alibi.”

  The professor chuckled. “I assure you the entire English department can vouch for the fact that I was in a meeting this morning.”

  “Then maybe you can help me with something else,” Coletti said. “I can account for four of the five people on that e-mail Clarissa sent, but I don’t know who the fifth person is. Do you?”

  “I can’t say that I do.”

  “But I suppose the people on that e-mail aren’t the only ones who believe in your theories about Poe,” Coletti said.

  “You’re probably right. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you how many believers there are. Could be ten, could be twenty, there might be hundreds.”

  “Have you ever taught your theories on Poe in a classroom environment?” Coletti asked.

  “For the past year my History of English Literature course included a snippet on Poe, but other than that, I haven’t done it.”

  “Is there a way to access a list of the students who took that course?”

  “Sure, class registration is computerized, so the registrar has a list of every student who’s taken my class over the past four years, along with their ID pictures. You should be able to request that list and get it fairly easily.”

  “How about people outside your class who might have learned of your theories?”

  “My writings on the subject are public knowledge, so I have no way of knowing who else might have read them other than the people I know personally.”

  “Can you provide me with a list of those you know personally?”

  “It’s a short list—Violet Grant and Lily Thompkins.”

  “And do you think either of them would kill to get to the secret first?”

  “I doubt it,” Workman said. “They’re history buffs, not killers.”

  “How about you?” Coletti asked. “Would you kill to get it?”

  “No,” Workman said firmly. “But I suppose someone who believed in my theories could’ve killed Clarissa, then killed Officer Smith to avoid being caught.”

  “Yes, I suppose they could have,” Coletti said thoughtfully. “I guess the only question is why.”

  “You should study English literature, Detective. Then you’d know there are only a few reasons people kill: love, hate, fear, money, and power. In Clarissa’s case, she was seeking the ultimate power, but obviously there was someone who wanted that power even more than she did.”

  Coletti got up from the couch, fished a card from his pocket, and handed it to the professor. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  “I will,” Workman said, taking the card and handing Coletti one of his own.

  “And, Professor?” Coletti said as he walked out the door. “Stick around. I’m sure I’ll have more questions for you later.”

  * * *

  Lenore sat silently in Mann’s car as they drove away from the Poe house. She was trying to understand how she’d suddenly become so important.

  She’d spent more than half her life being viewed as an outcast—the bastard daughter of a man who’d disgraced his entire family. After that, she’d spent four years toiling in college, only to find that academic success didn’t fulfill her. Soon after, while in grad school, she met and married a man who had everything several times over, but even that didn’t change the way she viewed herself.

  For twenty-nine years Lenore had felt like a nobody. Learning that there were those who saw her as the key to a 150-year-old secret was overwhelming. She’d never been anyone special before.

  “You all right?” Mann asked, glancing over at her as they turned onto Broad Street.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Where are we going now?”

  “To the safe house I told you about.”

  “Is Lieutenant Jackson going to be there?” she asked with a schoolgirl grin.

  He shot an annoyed look in her direction, then checked the rearview mirror to make sure the cop in the unmarked car was still following them. “She’s going to meet us later.”

  Lenore was quiet for a few minutes. “She seems to have real feelings for you,” Lenore said as she gazed out the window. “I don’t understand why you’re so distant toward her.”

  “It’s not for you to understand,” he said curtly.

  “I’m not trying to pry, but—”

  “Then don’t,” he snapped.

  “Okay,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “I was just…”

  She let the words trail off as she looked out the window and watched the city go by. She saw smiling college students walking among neighborhood residents whose faces looked worn out by poverty. She saw white-coated doctors in Crocs and scrubs near Temple University Hospital. She saw drug-addled people with hopelessness in their eyes.

  Lenore saw a city where poverty and affl
uence, history and hope were locked in a strange sort of dance, repeatedly switching partners while the music played on. She’d heard once that the sound of Philadelphia was the happy and hopeful chorus of songs like “Love Train.” But on trash-strewn streets where the distance between rich and poor looked insurmountable, all Lenore could hear was a dirge.

  Suddenly, the silence in the car was broken by the sound of a buzzing phone. Lenore looked at Mann to see if it was his, because it was rare for her to receive cell phone calls. When Charlie didn’t make a move, she fished her phone out of her purse.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end of the line spoke so loudly that Mann could hear it. He glanced at her curiously, but Lenore ignored him and bent forward as if that would somehow muffle the sound of her husband’s shouting.

  “Honey, you need to calm down,” she said as the yelling continued. “John … John! John! Stop shouting at me!”

  Charlie tried not to listen, but John Wilkinson was screaming so loudly that he couldn’t help hearing snippets of the conversation. Apparently John had returned from Europe to find that his wife had witnessed a murder, but rather than asking if Lenore was all right, he was demanding that she come home. Charlie didn’t understand all of it, but from what he could surmise, it had something to do with international investors who would frown upon Lenore’s involvement in a murder.

  “Listen, John,” Lenore said when she was able to get a word in edgewise. “I can’t do this right now.”

  There was more screaming, and when Charlie glanced at Lenore again, she had tears in her eyes.

  “Why are you more concerned about your investors than you are about me?” she yelled while her husband continued to rant. “Why can’t you, just one time, put me first? Do you even care about what I’ve been through? Does it matter to you that I could’ve been killed in that cemetery?”

  Lenore knew her husband didn’t hear a word she’d said. He was too busy trying to shout her down, just as he always did. But this conversation was different. He’d crossed an invisible line that Lenore had finally drawn for herself.

  “Shut up and listen to me, John!” she yelled, and miraculously, her husband did as he was told.

  Lenore was shaking with anger. Decorum was no longer the priority, and for the first time in a long time, neither were her husband’s desires.

  “I’ve called you five or six times since all this happened, and you ignored my calls, just like you always do.”

  Her husband tried to interrupt her, but Lenore wouldn’t let him.

  “No, I’m talking now, John, and you’re listening!” she shouted as tears streamed down her face. “I’ve tried to be a good wife to you. I’ve never used you, never crowded you, never taken more than I’ve been given. I’ve loved you, John, probably a lot more than you deserved. And for you to be callous enough to call me after what I’ve been through and talk to me about your investors—”

  Mann could hear him trying to backpedal, but Lenore was having none of it.

  “You know, John, I wasn’t sure that I should come to Philadelphia. I thought it was selfish of me to come here looking to do something for myself. But you’ve shown me what real selfishness is. Thanks for the lesson.”

  She disconnected the call, and in a few moments, the phone began buzzing again. Lenore hit the power button to turn the phone off and threw it in her pocketbook. Then she sat back and looked out the window with her arms folded.

  Charlie glanced at her once again. He almost felt sorry for her. “Are you all—”

  “It’s not for you to understand. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Okay,” Charlie said nonchalantly, thankful that he didn’t have to talk.

  As they turned off Broad at Pike Street and headed north on Germantown Avenue, they both tried to get their minds off their relationships. Mann focused on the road ahead. Lenore stared out the window and wondered what it would be like to live in a place such as this.

  There were barber shops and churches, restaurants and discount stores, and women wearing everything from Muslim garb to low-cut blouses. The men were dressed in boots and work clothes. The streets were dressed in discarded trash, and, mixed in amongst the teenage boys with their underwear exposed, there were children.

  They laughed as they ran along the sidewalk near the high school football field that bordered Hunting Park Avenue. They jumped rope along the residential strip near the train station called Wayne Junction. They rode bikes and skateboards on cracked, uneven sidewalks. They seemed to live happy lives, even as they frolicked in places where death was always close.

  Mann drove through a block of ramshackle houses where a waving American flag looked oddly out of place, and Lenore read the names of drug-war casualties on telephone poles with dingy teddy bear memorials.

  They rode farther, and the storefront churches that dotted nearly every block of Germantown Avenue gave way to storefront mosques. A tiny strip mall was surrounded by a low stone wall, and as Lenore stared out the window at the people, the people stared back, curious as to why she was so interested.

  “Where’s this safe house?” Lenore asked Mann as they passed yet another barber shop.

  “You’re the psychic,” Mann said. “You tell me.”

  She turned on him with all the attitude she could muster. “What is your problem?”

  Charlie Mann glanced at her before returning his attention to the road. “I don’t like people who get in my business.”

  “Well, from the way you treat your girlfriend, it looks like your business is a lot like mine. For that reason alone, I would’ve thought you’d be a little nicer to me after you overheard my conversation with John.”

  “And I would’ve thought we’d all get together, hold hands, and sing ‘Kum ba Yah.’ But since people keep killing each other, I keep coming to work.”

  Lenore didn’t respond. Instead she looked at him closely for the first time. She saw his rounded nose and chiseled jaw, his ample lips and chocolate skin. She saw something else beneath his handsome face, too. She saw that he was hurt.

  “You don’t like coming to work anymore, do you?”

  He laughed. “Is that one of those broad statements you psychics make so people think you’re for real?”

  “I don’t call myself a psychic,” Lenore said. “But I know when I see someone who’s hurting.”

  “What makes you think I’m hurting?”

  Lenore didn’t answer. Instead, she stared out the window, watching as the neighborhood changed from residential to commercial and back again. They passed Germantown High School and the First United Methodist Church. They passed the Johnson House, a former stop for runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. And with each historical landmark she saw, Lenore felt the triumph and heartbreak and pain and hope of those who’d traveled this road. None of her feelings were stronger than the ones that took hold of her as they approached Cliveden, a centuries-old estate near the site of a Revolutionary War battle.

  As Lenore looked through the wrought-iron gate at the grounds surrounding the mansion, the brilliant light of artillery flashed in her mind. She reached for her temples and squeezed to dull the pain, but the sound of charging horses grew louder as images from the battle filled her consciousness. Muskets flashed. Blood poured. Bodies fell. Then, suddenly, she saw a war of a different type.

  The uniforms were black instead of red and blue, and while the soldiers were spurred on by drugs and false belief, the deaths were all too real. A red-haired man lay dead on a train platform. Blood-spattered pews played host to twisted bodies. An angel’s wings stretched toward a hundred-foot ceiling. The final image she saw was her sister, falling as a bullet struck her head. A dark face was on the other side of the gunshot. That face belonged to Charlie Mann, and the grief belonged to him, too.

  As Lenore fell farther into the cavern that was her vision, the car stopped with a jolt. Charlie Mann’s voice came softly at first, like an echo, but as the cloud lifted from her mind
and she came back to the moment, she could feel his hands gripping her shoulders.

  “Mrs. Wilkinson!” he shouted as he shook her. “Lenore!”

  She heard him, though barely, so Charlie Mann shook her once again. Her shallow breathing became stronger, and the blackness in her mind gave way to a sea of colors, and she awakened feeling as if she’d seen the joy and pain of many lives, including Charlie’s.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He had pulled the car over to the curb. “You looked like you blacked out for a minute there.”

  “No, I just saw something,” she said as she looked into his face. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked with genuine concern.

  She nodded and ran her hands through her hair.

  He looked at her again, just to be certain she was all right. Then he pulled back into traffic, with the other car following close behind.

  “I never answered your question,” she said weakly as they bumped along the cobblestone street.

  “What question?”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back against her seat. “You asked what made me think you were hurting. Do you still want the answer?”

  They both knew he didn’t, but after a few seconds of silence, Lenore continued.

  “I think you’re hurting because you never imagined that being a cop meant you’d actually have to kill people.”

  Her words catapulted him back to the Angel of Death investigation. He didn’t know or care how much Lenore knew. He just wanted her to let it go.

  “The department exonerated me for what I did,” he said, his tone defensive. “So let’s just drop it.”

  “Dropping it won’t erase the fact that you’re still looking for forgiveness,” she said. “Especially if you can’t forgive yourself.”