Deeper Than the Grave

by Tina Whittle

  “Said Lucius owed him money. There was something bigger going down between them, but I never found out the details. Something about turf and connection, sketchy stuff.” She shrugged. “By then, I was with Eddie and totally outta there.”

  I picked up my pen. “Fishbone still around?”

  “Last I heard, he was living in his brother’s shop in Stone Mountain. He runs with the Concrete Kings now.”

  “Is that a gang?”

  She skewered me with that look. “It’s a skateboard club.”

  I scrawled “Fishbone Stone Mountain shop” on the back of my hand just as the door creaked open an inch. Trey stuck his head in. “Your ten minutes are up.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Now.”

  “I heard you!”

  He closed the door, leaving a half-inch sliver, and I shook my head at Cat. “My boyfriend. He’s a stickler.”

  “Eddie is too. I swear sometimes.”

  We both pretended to be annoyed. It was a small spot of camaraderie. Outside in the bar there were two men—one keeping an eye out for me, the other keeping an eye out for her, both of them grumpy and worried and overly protective. Both of them with reason to be. But both of them willing to stand by while we did our thing, said our piece, had our way.

  “The cops are probably going to drop by regardless,” I said. “Lucius didn’t leave town—he was killed—and they take that seriously downtown.”

  “I figured.” She shook her head. “Dead, huh? I always had this idea he would eventually get caught and I’d see him on the news, or maybe on one of those cop shows, getting hauled to jail. I didn’t see this coming.”

  I remembered the skull in the woods, matted decaying leaves, the rictus grin. The rest of him ripped apart and tossed like broken toys. I was pretty sure Lucius hadn’t seen this coming either.

  Cat rubbed her forearm. “Of course, if the bastard hadn’t run off, I mighta killed him myself.”

  “Why?”

  She turned sideways and stretched out her arm. The snake tattoo coiled and uncoiled as she flexed her bicep, lengthening with the muscles and sinew like a live thing. The black serpentine lines were more than artful ink—they were the skillful covering of scar tissue.

  “Fucker stabbed me with a fork, right in the middle of the Waffle House. Said I was cheating on him.”

  “Were you?”

  She grinned. “Uh huh. With Eddie. But Lucius was cheating too.”

  “With who?”

  “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. She grinned wider, obviously savoring the answer.

  “Shit. I thought everybody knew that. He was dipping his wick uptown with the Amberdecker bitch. Chelsea. So if you want to know who wanted to kill him, I suggest you look thataway.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Back at the shop, Trey insisted on checking things out before he left. I was used to this. As I unlocked the door, he watched over my shoulder, so close I could see the mist of his breath right beside my cheek.

  “You should get the locks changed,” he said.

  “Why? Because a corpse had the old keys?”

  “Because you don’t know who else had the keys.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and accessed the security feed. “You should also tell Detective Perez what you discovered tonight.”

  I flipped on the lights. “Tell her what? That Lucius’ ex-girlfriend said he’d been sleeping with Chelsea Amberdecker? I have only Cat’s word on that, unverified by you.”

  “Because you made me stand in the hall.”

  “She wouldn’t have spilled it otherwise.”

  Trey didn’t argue—he’d seen that as clearly as I had. And he’d heard me tell Cat she had to tell the police her story, which she’d agreed to do. I put her photograph back into the Lucius stack. The rest of the photographs lay on the floor, half in my scattered piles, half in Trey’s neat stacks.

  “I wonder if Richard knows about Lucius and Chelsea. He described her as having a taste for ‘wild game.’ If he knows, maybe he can tell us that story, because I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Chelsea herself.”

  Trey stood in the middle of the front room, verifying that each camera worked. “Has he returned your call yet?”

  “No. I wonder if he even knows they’ve made an ID on the skull. They camp out in the middle of some private woods. No cell phones allowed.”

  He stood under the deer head, switching the channel on and off with his phone. Every time he logged in, a little red light flickered behind the creature’s eyes. He shot me an accusative look.

  I smiled. “Just my way of making sure I know when you’re spying on me.”

  “I don’t spy.” He returned his phone to his pocket, and the light blinked off. “You should also tell the authorities about…what did you say his name was?”

  “Fishbone.”

  “No, his real name.”

  “Marcus something, Cat didn’t know the last name. But don’t worry, I’ll tell Detective Perez all about him.”

  Once I find out a little something about him myself, I thought, deep in my head where Trey couldn’t see it.

  He peeked over the edge of the box at the ATF paperwork, still unorganized. “Are you sure—”

  “It’s under control.”

  He harrumphed. “At least let me install the new monitor.”

  “I’ll do it myself tomorrow morning. It’s past your bedtime, and you know how you get.”

  He headed for the back. “I want to recheck the security door first.”

  I bit my lip and stopped arguing. Checking things was the Trey Seaver version of self-medication. He had to do something to bleed off the excess energy from our night of fending off pseudo-bikers and quizzing reluctant witnesses, or his brain would fry itself.

  “Did you have any messages from the Amberdeckers?” I called after him.

  He knelt in front of the door. “It doesn’t work that quickly. Marisa makes my assignments. It’s a complicated process.”

  “But it can be expedited. I’ve seen your schedule turn on a dime when some big shot requested you.”

  “True. But as you pointed out yesterday, the Amberdeckers have more pressing concerns right now.”

  “You mean like a valuable exhibit’s opening weekend? A daughter’s upcoming wedding to one of the most powerful sons of industry in the U.S.? A trigger-happy old lady, surrounded by treasures ripe for the stealing? Those seem exactly like Phoenix concerns.”

  “It’s—”

  “Complicated. I know.”

  He opened and closed the new security door twice, which seemed to give him immense satisfaction, even if he frowned at the casement window. As if he were surprised to see it still up there, all treacherous and transparent and non UL-rated.

  He came back into the main room. “Tai?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “This what?”

  “This…investigating. The bar, the History Center. I know it’s not because Detective Perez asked you to.”

  I propped myself against the counter, covered now in materials from the Amberdecker exhibit. I’d asked myself the same thing. And I knew the answer had something to do with the fact that every month—almost every month, anyway—I’d managed to drag the shop kicking and screaming into the black. But if Dexter’s reputation got destroyed, then Brenda wouldn’t have to lift a finger to ruin me. She could simply watch it happen from the safety of her shop.

  “I’m doing it for Dexter,” I said. “Because he would have done it for me. And because no matter what it looks like, he wasn’t involved in Lucius’ death.”

  Trey kept his eyes on the file boxes. “What if you learn that he was?”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “Are you sure?” Trey’s voice
was soft, non-accusatory. “You told me he was in a difficult situation after your aunt’s death. Under such circumstances, people can—”

  “Not Dexter.”

  “Nonetheless, I need you to understand—”

  “That if we discover he was involved, and I don’t tell the authorities, you will.”

  Trey hesitated, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I understand. Dexter’s innocent regardless.” I faced Trey over the patchwork of pamphlets, the detritus of my investigation. My case. “The real question is, are you going to help me prove it?”

  He straightened a folder with his finger until it lined up exactly with the counter’s edge. “Of course I am. You know that.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The next morning started with me flat on my back, and not in a good way. I planted my feet and shoved myself backward another inch under the counter, struggling to keep the cell phone against my ear. “Tell me the wire I’m looking for again.”

  “The input line.”

  I poked the flashlight into the dark space. “What does it look like?”

  “It’s black, thinner than the coaxial.”

  “Damn it, Trey, there’s a billion black wires up here!”

  “No, there’s not. Stop exaggerating.”

  I closed my eyes and sneezed. The dead space under the counter was good for only one thing—hiding the multitude of wires from Trey’s various security devices. The latest trend was totally wireless systems, but Trey was nothing if not redundant, so he’d purchased a hybrid for the shop, a system with landline, wireless and cell phone signal transmitters, all of it with a battery backup. Of course that meant three times as much to go wrong.

  “Did you tell Detective Perez about your interview last night?” he said.

  “I did.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She thanked me for the leads.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  I wiped my face with the clean part of my sleeve. I didn’t tell him that I’d glossed over Cat’s involvement in the whole mess, focusing instead on the mysterious Fishbone. I’d looked up the Concrete Kings over breakfast. They seemed harmless enough, a bunch of white kids who posted goofy videos of themselves attempting skateboard tricks with names like Ollie 180 and Noseslide. Fishbone was a top contributor—in his clips, he flipped and looped and gyrated, his dark hair flying behind him, occasionally flashing the skeletonized tattoo that gave him his nickname, the great dome of Stone Mountain rising behind him like a lunar landscape. The park around the mountain provided the backdrop for most of his videos, and I remembered Cat mentioning something about a brother living in the town there.…

  At Trey’s end of the line, I heard a no-nonsense female voice in the background. Marisa.

  “I have to go,” Trey said. “I’ll finish the installation at lunch.”

  “I can manage, I—” I sneezed again and the flashlight beam waggled.

  “I’ll see you at one.”

  I rolled to my stomach. Dust and cobwebs clotted my hair, and when I blinked, pieces of grit fell in my eyes. I gave up and climbed out from under the counter. The main room was cleaner, but still chaotic, with display cases waiting to be refilled, photographs waiting to be rehung. And—I couldn’t avoid it—the box of still-unorganized A&D materials next to an unopened package of color-coded labels Trey had brought me. I shook the dirt from my hair, Dexter’s voice echoing in my head. Time to get to work, girl.

  The voice was right. Trey was right. But I couldn’t get my conversation with Cat out of my mind. Young, defiant, with lousy taste in men, finally getting it together only to have some jerk from her past come back from the dead to trouble the waters. She’d no doubt seen the morning’s newspaper. Lucius was right there on the front page, along with absorbing speculations about the nature of his death.

  He hadn’t been alone in the AJC, however. The paper’s society section featured the Amberdecker-Pratchett bridal luncheon, an event happening at the High Museum in—I checked the clock on the wall—three hours. Chelsea’s engagement photo showcased her hothouse beauty—lush, full-lipped, peach-skinned. Only the assertive Amberdecker jawline revealed her DNA. She and Mr. Intercontinental Exchange made an elegant power couple, and considering the state of the Amberdecker family coffers, I couldn’t see either Rose or Evie complaining too hard.

  I remembered Cat’s accusation of the night before, about Lucius and Chelsea. Had she been telling the truth? Lying out of spite? Plain wrong? I found it hard to imagine Chelsea with a shady dropout like Lucius. But then, society women sometimes had lowbrow tastes in the bedroom.

  I tapped my foot. The High Museum was a public building. How hard would it be to slip inside, pull the bride-to-be into a discreet corner, and ask one simple question—were you having an affair with Lucius Dufrene?

  I looked down at my clothes. There was a smudge of doughnut glaze on my jeans, and the two pistols on the tee-shirt looked like the crossed arms of the Battle Flag. My closet consisted of jeans and tees at one end, red haute couture cocktail dresses at the other. Not a single appropriate thing for subtle surveillance at a society luncheon.

  I ran my hand through my hair. If I wanted to talk to Chelsea, I had less than three hours to transform into someone I wasn’t. Which meant there was only one person in the greater metro area who could help me.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Gabriella ran a French-manicured finger through a sherbet selection of afternoon dresses and frowned prettily. Her boutique offerings tended toward the shabby chic, but in deference to the early Easter, she’d ordered some Sunday outfits for the well-heeled infrequent churchgoer. I’d caught her between spa appointments, so she was wearing the white pants and baby tee she always wore at the massage table. Barefoot and tiny, with green cat eyes and red ringlets piled on top of her head, she had the porcelain skin of a woman much younger than her thirty-plus years, like a fresh-faced teen ripened on Provence wine and Gallic air.

  “Thank you for helping me on such short notice,” I said.

  She waved a slender white hand at me. “De rien. It is what I do, yes? Now tell me again what you are needing.”

  “Something fancy that one might wear to a garden party luncheon at the High.”

  She pulled a different dress from the rack and examined it. It was the purple of hyacinths, a blushing whisper of a dress. She held it in front of me, then put it right back on the rack, shaking her head.

  “What was wrong with that one?”

  “Non. Not for you.”

  I folded my arms, tried to make myself more compact. Being around Gabriella made me feel like a particularly uncouth bull in a particularly delicate china shop. She was a former ballerina and still moved with a dancer’s precise, easy grace. Trey refused to describe her as an ex-girlfriend; the details of their coming together and breaking apart were beyond his vocabulary. He was clear about one thing, however—after the accident, she and Garrity together had saved his life.

  And now she was…I had no words either. But she was the engineer of Trey’s wardrobe, the entire Italian couture section anyway, and my only hope for finding a high-society outfit on short notice.

  She turned a practiced eye on me again. “This is the Amberdecker-Pratchett affair you are attending, yes?”

  “It is. Do you know them?”

  “Not personally, no. I heard about it from Jean Luc—he is the contemporary curator at the High—and it has of course been all the talk. Chelsea is…what is the phrase? A dark horse, yes?”

  I perched myself on the edge of a white and gold divan. “Do tell.”

  Gabriella lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Several of my clients had hopes in the direction of Jeremy Pratchett. But the young man chose Chelsea. She worked there, you know, in the Intercontinental Exchange PR department.” Gabriell
a waved her hand around like a soft tiny tornado. “Whirlwind courtship. Very fast, very disappointing to some.”

  “But not for Rose Amberdecker and company?”

  “Oh no, the Amberdeckers are very happy, bien sûr, especially considering their lack of…” She rubbed the tips of her fingers together. “How did you come to know them? Through Trey?”

  “Umm…no.”

  So I told her. As I described the previous three days—the storm, the skull, the adventure at Hog Wild—she stopped paging through dresses and turned to face me, hands on hips.

  “This is one of your investigations?”

  She said the word the way that Trey and Garrity and Eric and Rico did, with pronounced suspicion. I tried to look innocent.

  “I want to ask Chelsea some questions, that’s all.”

  “About what?”

  So I told her. I emphasized the part where Detective Perez asked me to share what I found out with her, downplayed the whole “crashing the party” thing.

  Gabriella arched an elegant eyebrow at me. “That is no good.”

  “It’s not like I’m trying to break up the happy couple or anything, I only—”

  “That is not what I mean. I mean you are not an invited guest.”

  “So? It’s being held in a tent on the piazza, practically in the front yard for all of Midtown to see. Lots of people coming and going, very easy to slip past the ropes.”

  “No, you don’t understand. This party is as much a display as the Picasso or the Monet, and it will be equally as well protected. Discreetly, yes. They know everyone who will be there, you see…” She shook her head. “But they do not know you.”

  She had a point. “So what am I supposed to do? All I have is a rumor. I don’t want to sic the police on Chelsea, or Cat, or anybody, not unless I have something concrete.”

  “Yes, I see. It is delicate. You do not want to ruin someone’s life on a rumor.” She tapped her lips with her index finger, her cat eyes flashing. “Wait here. I have an idea.”

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, I wore the exact outfit she did, only in black. I recognized the uniform as the one worn by the women in her nail salon. When I put it on it, I become one of the barely perceived bodies present at every society event—the wait staff, the cleaning crew, the delivery people. I became—for all intents and purposes—invisible.